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.

	▲	wtallis 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> 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.
	▲	seanmcdirmid 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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