HACKER Q&A
📣 tosh

Would it make sense to put two A13 into a MacBook or iPad?


I just had this shower thought that Apple must get incredible economies of scale [0] from putting the A13 [1] (system on a) chip into their current flagship iPhones but also in the iPhone SE.

Now we can also expect the A13 to tickle down into iPads and Apple TVs.

With talk about upcoming ARM Macbooks I was wondering if it would make sense to put more than one A13 into a system (e.g. think Macbook or iPad)?

I guess this would require changes on the os level, cooling architecture, bandwidth and so on and just be infeasible for various reasons.

On the other hand I guess there are examples of how massive economies of scale make some inelegant or impractical things practical.

Unfortunately I don't have enough context how to even think about the various trade-offs or changes one would need to think through.

Any comment or pointers highly appreciated!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A13

  👤 wmf Accepted Answer ✓
The existing A-class chips don't have any coherent link like UPI or CCIX so it's impossible to connect multiple of them together. If we look at existing Intel/AMD-based laptops, they aren't based on multiple CPUs either; they have separate 4/6/8-core dies for different size laptops yet they still have reasonable economy of scale.