There could be several reasons why Apple decided to do this. It could be chip binning, which reuses chips that were defective during manufacturing. Typically, Apple might decide to trash a defective chip with a core that can’t meet the iPhone’s maximum performance requirements. With chip binning, defective cores are deactivated and the chipset is used with fewer cores.
Two different variants of A17 Pro are found in the iPhone 15 Pro series and iPad (A17 Pro) models. |-Mac’s Cult
So in this case, Apple used chip binning to turn what would have been a defective chipset in the iPhone into the A17 Pro variant for the new iPad mini, albeit with one fewer GPU core. Masu. This may have had the added effect of saving Apple some money. The A17 Pro AP iteration with a 5-core GPU will reduce Apple’s volume production costs.
“The new iPad mini gets a major update with the A17 Pro, delivering incredible performance and power efficiency in an ultraportable design. The A17 Pro delivers many improvements over the previous generation iPad mini, the A15 Bionic. It’s a powerful chip. With a 6-core CPU — 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores — A17 Pro delivers a 30% increase in CPU performance. 1 A17 Pro also improves graphics performance. Equipped with 5 core GPUa 25% jump compared to the previous generation. ”-Apple
Importantly, the Apple iPad mini (A17 Pro) will come with 8GB of RAM. This means it can support Apple Intelligence. And perhaps iPad mini (A17 Pro) users will not be able to use the A17 Pro AP even though they could see their coffers filled with more funds thanks to Apple adopting a cheaper chip binning strategy. You probably won’t notice that it has one less GPU core.
