M4 iPad Pros with 8GB of RAM may actually have 12GB — teardowns reveal possible Apple hijinks

Dallin Grimm
·2 min read
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IFixit teardown showing the M4 chip and RAM modules on the iPad Pro 13.
IFixit teardown showing the M4 chip and RAM modules on the iPad Pro 13.

Apple's newest iPad Pro 13 may be cutting consumers short, with 12GB onboard RAM being artificially limited to 8GB. MacRumors forum user layerstack posted their detective work, seeking to independently verify the listed RAM capacities of Apple's newest iPad Pro lineup.

Apple's newest M4 iPad Pro 13 releases with two models, a 256GB/512GB storage model with a 9-core CPU and 8GB of RAM or a 1TB/2TB storage variant with the flagship 10-core CPU and 16GB of RAM. With teardown videos and blogs finally releasing, revealing the iPad's shiny new M4 silicon, internet sleuths are investigating every revealed inch of these machines.

The condensed FBGA codes for Micron's RAM modules are clearly seen on some teardowns, revealing the exact chips Apple used for their iPads. The 16GB iPad, sure enough, contains 16GB of Micron LPDDR5 RAM. But the 8GB model has two 48Gbit modules onboard. 48 gigabits converts to 6 gigabytes, meaning the lower-grade iPad Pro model has 12GB of RAM available from its RAM module. But in use, the iPad Pro has only its advertised 8GB RAM accessible.

Why Apple would artificially limit its RAM modules is unknown. Theories floated on comment sections across the web suggest a few possible solutions — some more charitable than others. Perhaps no 4GB chips exist with enough dies to supply the bandwidth Apple demands, the chips are binned for performance, or none of the major RAM manufacturers offer 4GB chips as standard for LPDDR5 memory and Apple couldn't afford to commission custom chips for a poorer-selling product. Maybe the part number is wrong after all, and Apple is using new custom RAM that coincidentally has the exact same part number as Micron's 6GB chip.

The most flaunted reason from web users is that Apple is artificially limiting the performance of these modules for product segmenting, keeping a traditional 8GB or 16GB RAM dichotomy between its iPads. This seems like a likely answer, which would mean that Apple has four unused gigs of RAM just sitting on its logic boards doing nothing. Apple's goal may be to avoid the unfamiliar "12GB RAM" spec which may alienate some consumers; Cupertino is likely looking to avoid any possible drop in sales after a bad year for iPad in 2023.

Our thorough summary of Apple's new M4 iPad Pros and their teardowns can be found here. The newest iPad Pros are mostly remarkable due to the brand-new M4 chip, Apple's fresh silicon being introduced on an iPad for the first time. In its current form, its only major improvement over the M3 is its NPU for AI workloads, but a bit of liquid nitrogen can take it far beyond its rated performance.