M2 iPad Air GPU has nine cores, not 10

Apple has quietly changed the M2 iPad Air's listed GPU core count from 10 cores to nine cores, and Metal benchmark testing suggests that the nine-core spec is accurate.

The M2 iPad Air was originally announced as having a 10-core GPU in its initial press release on May 7, 2024. The press release has remained uncorrected, as has an iPad Air support page, and all listings for the product in Apple Stores outside the US as of June 1, 2024.

The correction, first spotted by 9to5 Mac, on Saturday is likely to be the true core count, with the original specs having strangely been in error. Geekbench's Metal benchmark testing of the M2 iPad Air shows a score of 41,095, compared to the M2 iPad Pro's 10-core GPU, which rates a score of 45,195.

The difference of about 10 percent is explained by the lack of a 10th core in the iPad Air's M2 GPU. The corrected core count in the M2 chips used in iPad Air is the same in both the 11-inch and 13-inch models.

The M2 chip in the iPad Air models is a in all probability a "binned" version of the 10-core chip, with one of the GPU cores disabled. This is done in many cases to increase processor yields, and not have to toss a chip that has one GPU core that doesn't function.

The data correction will likely propagate to Apple's other pages and international sites in the near future.

This also means that the M2 iPad Air is the only machine Apple sells that sports a nine-core M2 GPU.

11 Comments

22july2013 3725 comments · 11 Years

About 5 months ago

Is Apple going to compensate the people who bought it thinking it was 10 core? Maybe a $100 gift card? That seems fair to me.

Anilu_777 577 comments · 8 Years

“ The M2 chip in the iPad Air models is a in all probability a "binned" version of the 10-core chip, with one of the GPU cores disabled. This is done in many cases to increase processor yields, and not have to toss a chip that has one GPU core that doesn't function.”

Ok so they store all these GPU’s that have a non functioning core and then put them in the new iPad Air? That seems like a lot of work.

nubus 609 comments · 8 Years

Anilu_777 said:

“ The M2 chip in the iPad Air models is a in all probability a "binned" version of the 10-core chip, with one of the GPU cores disabled. This is done in many cases to increase processor yields, and not have to toss a chip that has one GPU core that doesn't function.”

Ok so they store all these GPU’s that have a non functioning core and then put them in the new iPad Air? That seems like a lot of work.

The M2 SoC combines CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, and more. It is a rather expensive part. TSMC uses automated testing from companies like Teradyne to bin the M2 chips based on number of functional GPU and CPU cores. Think about it as meat. The "Prime" variants are used in MBP while the "Select" variants end up in iPad Air. Guess Apple is having a lot of these in stock from past M2 production.

To me the economy behind binning is the only reason why iPad Air is using M2 at all. The M2 is dated, power hungry compared to 3nm, uses a rather slow Neural Engine, and the GPU is way behind M3/A17 Pro. Probably not going to perfom well with on-device LLMs and the longevity when using AI features from new OS versions could be very limited.

rnb2 63 comments · 15 Years

The benchmarks quote an M2 Pro chip with 10 GPU cores - the M2 Pro has either 16 or 19 GPU cores, so the quoted benchmark is from the standard “non-binned” version of the M2 (which has 10 GPU cores).

chasm 3590 comments · 10 Years

rnb2 said:

The benchmarks quote an M2 Pro chip with 10 GPU cores - the M2 Pro has either 16 or 19 GPU cores, so the quoted benchmark is from the standard “non-binned” version of the M2 (which has 10 GPU cores).

It's been corrected to "M2 iPad Pro," which makes sense.