Mystery Apple chip discovered in iMac Pro teardown not A10 Fusion coprocessor [u]
A careful disassembly of the new iMac Pro has found another Apple-made chip in addition to the new T2, though close inspection of the silicon reveals it is not the A10 Fusion coprocessor some expected would be included in the powerful all-in-one.
In taking apart the new iMac Pro, iFixit discovered an Apple chip identified as "338S00268," which the repair experts said "appears to be the rumored A10 Fusion coprocessor." Notably, the chip discovered near the solid-state hard drive is separate from the T2 chip, which handles secure booting, password encryption and more.
The firm later recanted its hypothesis, saying the package is too small to contain an A10's innards.
The discovery of a second Apple chip does, however, refuel speculation as to what exactly the hardware is for.
Prior to the shipment of the iMac Pro, developers found indications in macOS High Sierra that an A10 processor could be included inside of the machine, generating rumors that the iMac Pro might boast always-on "Hey Siri" support and more. However, no such capabilities were found once the machine shipped, suggesting the custom silicon serves a different purpose.
iFixit's teardown also found that upgrading the RAM on Apple's iMac Pro is a possibility, but not without a "major undertaking." After taking apart the machine, they found that the RAM used comes on standard 288-pin DDR4 ECC sticks.
Accordingly, the solutions provider swapped in four 32-gigabyte modules for 128 gigabytes.
Less clear on upgradeability, however, is the CPU, which appears to have been custom-made for the iMac Pro. Assuming Intel sells compatible models to consumers at some point, replacing the CPU should be "theoretically possible," iFixit said.
One thing that won't be upgraded, however, is the graphics card, as iFixit found that the GPU is soldered in place.
Though iFixit only gave the iMac Pro a repairability score of 3 out of 10, the site did say that the machine "goes back together just fine." they plan to offer a step-by-step upgrade guide soon.
Update: In a subsequent tweet, iFixit said the mystery chip is too small to be an A10 Fusion coprocessor.
"Whoops! We initially thought this Apple 338S00268 chip was the rumored A10 Fusion coprocessor, but the package size is too small (roughly 7.4 mm each side). What do you think it is? Maybe a PMIC of some sort?" iFixit said.
The story has been updated to reflect iFixit's statement.
In taking apart the new iMac Pro, iFixit discovered an Apple chip identified as "338S00268," which the repair experts said "appears to be the rumored A10 Fusion coprocessor." Notably, the chip discovered near the solid-state hard drive is separate from the T2 chip, which handles secure booting, password encryption and more.
The firm later recanted its hypothesis, saying the package is too small to contain an A10's innards.
The discovery of a second Apple chip does, however, refuel speculation as to what exactly the hardware is for.
Prior to the shipment of the iMac Pro, developers found indications in macOS High Sierra that an A10 processor could be included inside of the machine, generating rumors that the iMac Pro might boast always-on "Hey Siri" support and more. However, no such capabilities were found once the machine shipped, suggesting the custom silicon serves a different purpose.
iFixit's teardown also found that upgrading the RAM on Apple's iMac Pro is a possibility, but not without a "major undertaking." After taking apart the machine, they found that the RAM used comes on standard 288-pin DDR4 ECC sticks.
Accordingly, the solutions provider swapped in four 32-gigabyte modules for 128 gigabytes.
Less clear on upgradeability, however, is the CPU, which appears to have been custom-made for the iMac Pro. Assuming Intel sells compatible models to consumers at some point, replacing the CPU should be "theoretically possible," iFixit said.
One thing that won't be upgraded, however, is the graphics card, as iFixit found that the GPU is soldered in place.
Though iFixit only gave the iMac Pro a repairability score of 3 out of 10, the site did say that the machine "goes back together just fine." they plan to offer a step-by-step upgrade guide soon.
Update: In a subsequent tweet, iFixit said the mystery chip is too small to be an A10 Fusion coprocessor.
"Whoops! We initially thought this Apple 338S00268 chip was the rumored A10 Fusion coprocessor, but the package size is too small (roughly 7.4 mm each side). What do you think it is? Maybe a PMIC of some sort?" iFixit said.
The story has been updated to reflect iFixit's statement.
Comments
What is wrong with a MBP with an external GPU?
Is there a reason I don’t know to why they aren’t so popular.
Apple is getting back into the display market, so I imagine we'll see some Retina-caliber displays that connect over TB3, and maybe even have their own integrated eGPUs. Toss in an external Magic Keyboard with Touch Bar, and I'm in -- but I might be asking for too much in 2018.
Do you have any experience with that?
I want to test the eGPU setup on the Mac Mini 2014.
This topic isn't really related to the story at hand, so I won't be commenting anymore, but we have some info on eGPU over Thunderbolt 2 (and 1) in this article if you're interested:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/04/apples-egpu-work-in-high-sierra-is-impressive-but-six-more-months-will-make-it-better
This would actually be useful for me. There’s an indispensable Chinese data/reference/research tool I use that is iOS only.
From a user perspective, I don't think we're going to see vanilla iOS apps on the Mac (though the rumor is a unified code base coming in 2018 will make it easier to port and update/enhance iOS apps for the Mac). From a developer perspective, Xcode already emulates running apps on the Mac, and having an A-series coprocessor could be handy for developers.
BTW, that black PC board finish looks nice.
If it is an A10 in the iMac Pro, frankly it baffles me. A low-power A-series chip would make more sense, to me, in a notebook, where it could be used for power saving functions.
I just bought an iMac Pro to stop the gap between my 4-year old MBP and... the first MBP that has 32GB RAM? The way things are going in my industry, more and more of the workload is getting pulled off the processor (especially multicore rendering), and dumped on the GPU. Plus it would be really nice to own and maintain one machine, disconnect it from the office, and take it onsite or wherever...
Nonsense. That second Apple chip is far too small to be an A10. The entire package is smaller than the A10 die.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/06/26/psa-there-are-not-yet-any-retina-caliber-external-displays-compatible-with-apples-egpu-support-in-macos-high-sierra
What you think it is is already there. You can fire up Xcode and create a project with a macOS, iOS and watchOS target, sharing code where possible. In general this means the business logic.
hoping Apple was beginning work to 1. Provide mouse suppurt in iOS and then let those apps deploy to macOS.
At the moment, MacOs developers use the old NEXT-based UI framework for front-end coding. Coding the front-end for iOS means using the much fresher UIKit. Apple has been working on porting the UIKit to the Mac framework so that developers can share the same front-end library across iOS and the Mac.
Yes, you can use XCode to target different platforms, but you still need to use different UI frameworks to build the apps. This has led to folk using other non-native toolkits to build apps, or even worse, skinning web pages into apps.
The first app that used the new framework is Photos for the Mac, so developers are expecting Apple to open the tech to everyone at WWDC 2018. As a side effect of this, a few developers posting I’ve at Ars Technica believe that Apple might be doing away with the Mac App Store, and moving to a single store for all their platforms.
I think StrangeDay’s take is closer to what is happening.
Running iOS apps on MacOS would lead to a poor user experience, and since iOS is the dominant platform, the larger development shops such as Microsoft and Adobe would cut their costs by abandoning native Mac development and just tell people to run the iOS app instead. Fortunately, Apple is well aware of what happened to OS/2, and that’s one of the reasons they’ll steer clear of allowing iOS apps to run on the Mac.
It’s worth reading Gruber’s take, which highlights some of the pitfalls of the ‘shared framework’ approach.
https://daringfireball.net/2017/12/marzipan