Hacker News Reader

Comment by alberth | Hacker News Reader

Apple is binning the iPad Pro chips:

   Storage      CPU
   ≤ 512GB      3 P-cores (and 6 E-cores)
   1TB+         4 P-cores (and 6 E-cores)

https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/specs/

View on HN

The sales volumes of the 1TB+ models has got to be fairly low, which makes this fascinating. Since they are being somewhat quiet about it (rather than trumpeting "the 1TB+ models are even faster!") it suggests the P-cores don't yield well enough to support 4 P-cores in the 256GB and 512GB SKUs.

I actually wonder if the 1TB+ models of the iPad Pro represent a higher portion of all models sold than that storage capacity would in other product lines. The iPad Pro is such a niche, weird device; it feels like if you're buying it, you're buying it for something, probably media production related. Its not a Netflix machine.

a lot of people use it in music production for example. weird indeed.

Storage-gating is really disgusting considering how much Apple charges for storage.

iirc in the past it was about memory and that larger storage needs more memory for caching.

So this made at least some sense.

I guess yields might be good enough that they can afford to bin with another core in there as well.

Memory is probably still the main reason for binning in the first place.

My guess is that the lower-tier storage iPad Pro's are getting the "defective" MacBook Pro chips.

I figure it's probably just reducing SKUs. The people who care about the fastest chip are likely also the people wanting lots of storage so you can save on having to create a ton more products by bundling them.

Still? They really don't overcharge. The storage they sell is much, much, much faster than what everyone compares it to at lower prices.

You can get Mac Studio 3rd party "SSDs" for less than half the price Apple charges for the same storage, with the same performance, they even use the same flash chips!

I wouldn’t mind some cheap slow storage. SD card / usb-c mini plugs aren’t really great option.

Evidence?

Where are you getting this information? Curious because I can't find any evidence that Apple has "much, much, much faster" storage. If anything, Apple storage looks mediocre at best.

For example: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m4-mbp-ssd-speeds.24422....

Compare with: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/crucial-t710....

While it is not an Apple to Oranges comparison, T710 seems 80% faster for writing big files, and for $279.99 - $299.99 for 2TB this is still much cheaper than whatever Apple is offering.

If you have a better reference (specially if there is something that is cross platform), I would be interested.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com