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Comment by wtallis | Hacker News Reader

> For Apple, they have binning flexibility, with Pro/Max/Ultra, all the way down to iPads

The Pro and Max chips are different dies, and the Ultra currently isn't even the same generation as the Max. And the iPads have never used any of those larger dies.

> NVIDIAs flexibility came from using some of those binned dies for GeForce cards

NVIDIA's datacenter chips don't even have display outputs, and have little to no fixed-function graphics hardware (raster and raytracing units), and entirely different memory PHYs (none of NVIDIA's consumer cards have ever used HBM).

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They’re binning within those product lines - both NVIDIA and Apple.

Not binning an M4 Max for an iPhone, but an M4 Pro with a few GPU or CPU cores disabled is clearly a thing.

Same for NVIDIA. The 4080 is a 4090 die with some SMs disabled.

> The 4080 is a 4090 die with some SMs disabled.

The desktop 4090 uses the AD102 die, the laptop 4090 and desktop 4080 use the AD103 die, and the laptop 4080 uses the AD104 die. I'm not at all denying that binning is a thing, but you and other commenters are exaggerating the extent of it and underestimating how many separate dies are designed to span a wide product line like GPUs or Apple's computers/tablets/phones.

There are levels inside pro, max, and ultra that might be the product of binning?

"Ultra" isn't even binned - it's just 2x "Max" chips connected together.

Otherwise, yes, if a chip doesn't make M4 Max, it can make M4 Pro. If not, M4. If not, A18 Pro. If not that, A18.

And even all of the above mentioned marketing names come in different core configurations. M4 Max can be 14 CPU Cores / 32 GPU cores, and it can also be 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores.

So yeah, I'd agree that Apple has _extreme_ binning flexibility. It's likely also the reason why we got A19 / A19 Pro / M5 first, and we still don't have M5 Pro or M5 Max yet. Yields not high enough for M5 Max yet.

Unfortunately I don't think they bin down even lower (say, to S chips used in Apple Watches), but maybe in the future they will.

In retrospect, Apple ditching Intel was truly a gamechanging move. They didn't even have to troll everyone by putting an Intel i9 into a chassis that couldn't even cool an i7 to boost the comparison figures, but I guess they had to hedge their bet.

> yes, if a chip doesn't make M4 Max, it can make M4 Pro. If not, M4. If not, A18 Pro. If not that, A18.

No, that's entirely wrong. All of those are different dies. The larger chips wouldn't even fit in phones, or most iPad motherboards, and I'm not sure a M4 Max or M4 Pro SoC package could even fit in a MacBook Air.

As a general rule, if you think a company might ever be selling a piece of silicon with more than half of it disabled, you're probably wrong and need to re-check your facts and assumptions.

No, I think you have it wrong.

There are two levels of Max Chip, but think of a Max as two pros on die (this is simplification, you can also think of as pro as being two normal cores tied together), so a bad max can't be binned into a pro. But a high-spec Max can be binned into a low-spec Max.

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