What‘s Up With MacBook Neo Production?

Tim Culpan, reporting at Culpium: This renewed commitment to meeting demand means Apple must also ask TSMC for a hot lot of A18 Pro chips, the same processor used in the iPhone 16 Pro. The system-on-chip is made using TSMC’s N3E process, with the initial production run underway at least two years ago. However, the chips used in the Neo are actually downbinned versions of the one used in the iPhone, meaning some parts of the die were considered defective or unable to run at its full design spec. In keeping with industry practice, instead of scrapping these “less-than-perfect” chips, Apple turned off the defect parts and repurposed it for another product. As Ben Thompson of Stratechery wrote at the time, this downbin strategy means the SoCs in the Neo are effectively “free chips.” With a fresh batch of A18 Pro SoCs, most of the new processors for the Neo will actually be top-tier and only some would fall into the downbin category. This means that in most cases the six GPUs would be…