[jmisavage]

The low end Air only has 7 GPU cores compared with 8 on the one with more storage. So they must be disabling a bad core and selling it the cheap model. Other than that all these machines use the exact same CPUs. Which means that an iMac or 16" MBP are probably going to use a M1X or something with more cores.

[ARandomerDude]

> So they must be disabling a bad core and selling it the cheap model.

I really don't know much (anything) about the hardware manufacturing world. Is this a common practice?

[User23]

Yes. Chip fabrication is super sensitive to the condition of the silicon wafer used. Chip companies talk about yields, because some percentage of chips can't, for example, be run at the highest clock rate. Indeed, some can't run reliably at all. If there is a microscopic flaw on the wafer that ends up being where one of the cores is located, disabling that core altogether is an option to keep that silicon marketable.

[zitterbewegung]

Could be disabling but it could also be the fact to increase yields to their most appealing product.