Apple on Tuesday announced a new generation of the iPad mini, which comes three years after the iPad mini 6. On the outside, the iPad mini 7 looks exactly like its predecessor, but there's a big change on the inside: the A17 Pro chip. While many have claimed that it is the same chip as the iPhone 15 Pro, it appears that the iPad mini 7 runs on a binned version of the chip.
The A17 Pro chip in the iPad mini 7 is a binned version of the iPhone 15 Pro chip
The A17 Pro chip was introduced last year with the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, and until then, those were the only devices with the chip. In the iPhone, the A17 Pro chip has a 6-core CPU and 6-core GPU, along with 8GB of RAM. While the chip in the iPad likely also has 8GB of RAM, Apple's website suggests it uses a scaled-down version of the chip with fewer cores.
Specifically, the iPad mini 7 specs say that the A17 Pro chip used in the tablet has a 6-core CPU but a 5-core GPU — one less than the chip used in the iPhone 15 Pro. This isn’t surprising, since Apple has used chip culling in some of its devices before.
For those unfamiliar, chip culling is a quality control process in chip manufacturing. Instead of discarding chips that haven’t reached peak performance on all of their cores, some are deactivated and the chip can still be used with fewer cores.
It’s easy to assume that Apple had a bunch of A17 Pro chips lying around and decided to use them in the iPad mini 7 since the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max were discontinued in September. Since it's just a reduction in the number of GPU cores, the overall performance of the chip probably won't suffer for most tasks.
With the A17 Pro chip and 8GB of RAM, the new iPad mini is compatible with the Apple Intelligence features coming this month with iPadOS 18.1.
Pre-orders for the iPad mini 7 are now available on Apple's website, but you can also find great deals on other iPad models on Amazon.
Read more
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