5 ms·

One of my biggest gripes about Macs is that their thermal engineers refuse to get off their high horses and build real cooling solutions that don't artifically

One of my biggest gripes about Macs is that their thermal engineers refuse to get off their high horses and build real cooling solutions that don't artifically limit the capabilities of an objectively performance-competitive CPU. I don't care if it consumes 200 W of power. I don't care if the chassis needs to be thicker to accommodate a larger heatsink. I don't care if you need to run the fans at 100%. Just let me use the full power of the CPU created by the chip designers god dammit!

tiffanyh 3y ago
I was expecting the MacPro (M-series) to be exactly that. A high wattage, highly cooled proc. But nope, they did what you described.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > I was expecting the MacPro (M-series) to be exactly that. MKBHD put forward an interesting hypothesis in his last podcast: this generation Mac Pro has simply to get the refresh out the door. They took their existing designs (SoC/chips, cases) and simply mashed them together. Similarly to how they simply mashed the M-chips into existing laptop case designs first, and then optimized with Gen2. Now that they have something, they can iterate on a more harmonious solution that allows for the advantages of each.
- gumby 3y ago
  Yeah, I did too. The use case for the Mac Pro is even more limited than what you would expect (it's not like there are a lot of supported PCI boards). It's hard to think of many users who would choose it over a Studio. I doubt Apple will make any money on the Pro. They could use this version as a stepping stone to a future faster device. But I suspect this form factor is a dead end for the Apple customer base. Maybe it exists for bragging (i.e. marketing) rights, the same reason Honda funds a Formula 1 team.
oneplane 3y ago
> I don't care if That's the thing: they aren't building it just for you. We can speculate about their internal requirements documents, but what's for sure is that they calculate a projected market adoption based on various factors like cost, market segmentation, power draw, heat transfer, noise etc. If it turns out that they project a bigger profit with a lower power limit than technically possible, that's what they'll do. Personally, it would be nice of this were to apply to any CPU, GPU, SoC and even VRM and DC-DC regulators; let me worry about the dissipation, just pump out as many cycles as possible. But that's not really something that covers any significant market that Apple (or most multinationals) is targeting. What I find much more surprising is that all of their M1/M2 deployments seem to be far fewer bin-limited; normally you'd get a crapton of SKUs for a SoC because they are so hard to manufacture, but Apple seems to get away with only 15 to 20. Perhaps this is also why there are much clearer power limits on most of their devices.
mnd999 3y ago
They used to, the G5 Macs had impressive cooling.
- nickdothutton 3y ago
  I wasnt a G5 owner, waited for the Intel switch, but I gather the G5 water cooling had a very high failure rate and this was at least a large part of why Jobs dropped IBM/MOT/PPC int he end. They promised him a high clock, air cooled G5 but couldn't deliver.
  - hulitu 3y ago
    > They promised him a high clock, air cooled G5 but couldn't deliver. Then how were IBM processors cooled ? IBM used also PowerPC
    - peppermint_gum 3y ago
      IBM version of G5, POWER4 and POWER5, was clocked a bit lower than G5, and their servers and workstations had extremely loud fans.
    - pram 3y ago
      If you've never been around an AIX Power server: they're extraordinarily loud. Usually these 3/4U rack servers that sound like a plane taking off.
  - etempleton 3y ago
    The bigger issue was that they couldn’t get the G5 to work in a laptop and this was killing Apple. Apple’s laptops have always been a cut above their PC counterparts in terms of design, but in those days it felt like Apple Laptops were from a different planet, except they were unreasonably slow in large part because they were stuck on the G4 processor for years. Switching to intel was a necessity for survival. IBM just couldn’t deliver or keep up with what Intel was doing.
- pram 3y ago
  The G5s had to have impressive cooling lol
etempleton 3y ago
That is kind of the thing. The whole Mac Studio only consumes ~200 watts. It is what I find about this article to be disingenuous. Sure, by all means compare the M2 Ultra to the Intel 13900K and the Nvidia 4080, but at least mention that it is consuming a third of the power.
florakel 3y ago
It’s a fair point. Especially for the new Mac Pro they could have implemented a more robust thermal solution and clock the whole thing higher. That’s one advantage of a bigger chasis, isn’t it?
- MBCook 3y ago
  The took the giant overkill design meant to hold a hot Intel chip and possibly multiple big GPUs, and put a M2 Ultra in it. It’s overcooled. There is no way it’s thermally limited. It’s got to have headroom for days. I’m very curious where this idea I keep seeing in the comments that Apple refuses to run chips at full speed for cooling reasons comes from.
  - florakel 3y ago
    The current Mac Pro is kind of pointless. Before you got a powerful workstation (power consumption was irrelevant), now you get a Studio Mac in a new package. I feel they just launched it for “compliance” not because it is a great product. They hit a wall with scaling the M chip architecture. Building an even larger chip than the Ultra would be insane and going multi socket is not possible.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      They need a product for people who need expansion slots for non-GPU things, and it fits that. I agree that it’s likely they wanted to use the quad M2 chip (jade 4 C die, if I remember the term correctly), which would have given them far more PCIE lanes and made it more desirable. But that doesn’t seem to have worked out. And the lineup had a whole they needed to fill for some of their top end customers. So here we are.
wmf 3y ago
AFAIK none of the desktop Macs are thermally limited.

tiffanyh 3y ago

I was expecting the MacPro (M-series) to be exactly that. A high wattage, highly cooled proc. But nope, they did what you described.

throw0101b 3y ago
> I was expecting the MacPro (M-series) to be exactly that. MKBHD put forward an interesting hypothesis in his last podcast: this generation Mac Pro has simply to get the refresh out the door. They took their existing designs (SoC/chips, cases) and simply mashed them together. Similarly to how they simply mashed the M-chips into existing laptop case designs first, and then optimized with Gen2. Now that they have something, they can iterate on a more harmonious solution that allows for the advantages of each.
gumby 3y ago
Yeah, I did too. The use case for the Mac Pro is even more limited than what you would expect (it's not like there are a lot of supported PCI boards). It's hard to think of many users who would choose it over a Studio. I doubt Apple will make any money on the Pro. They could use this version as a stepping stone to a future faster device. But I suspect this form factor is a dead end for the Apple customer base. Maybe it exists for bragging (i.e. marketing) rights, the same reason Honda funds a Formula 1 team.

oneplane 3y ago

> I don't care if That's the thing: they aren't building it just for you. We can speculate about their internal requirements documents, but what's for sure is that they calculate a projected market adoption based on various factors like cost, market segmentation, power draw, heat transfer, noise etc. If it turns out that they project a bigger profit with a lower power limit than technically possible, that's what they'll do. Personally, it would be nice of this were to apply to any CPU, GPU, SoC and even VRM and DC-DC regulators; let me worry about the dissipation, just pump out as many cycles as possible. But that's not really something that covers any significant market that Apple (or most multinationals) is targeting. What I find much more surprising is that all of their M1/M2 deployments seem to be far fewer bin-limited; normally you'd get a crapton of SKUs for a SoC because they are so hard to manufacture, but Apple seems to get away with only 15 to 20. Perhaps this is also why there are much clearer power limits on most of their devices.

mnd999 3y ago

They used to, the G5 Macs had impressive cooling.

nickdothutton 3y ago
I wasnt a G5 owner, waited for the Intel switch, but I gather the G5 water cooling had a very high failure rate and this was at least a large part of why Jobs dropped IBM/MOT/PPC int he end. They promised him a high clock, air cooled G5 but couldn't deliver.
- hulitu 3y ago
  > They promised him a high clock, air cooled G5 but couldn't deliver. Then how were IBM processors cooled ? IBM used also PowerPC
  - peppermint_gum 3y ago
    IBM version of G5, POWER4 and POWER5, was clocked a bit lower than G5, and their servers and workstations had extremely loud fans.
  - pram 3y ago
    If you've never been around an AIX Power server: they're extraordinarily loud. Usually these 3/4U rack servers that sound like a plane taking off.
- etempleton 3y ago
  The bigger issue was that they couldn’t get the G5 to work in a laptop and this was killing Apple. Apple’s laptops have always been a cut above their PC counterparts in terms of design, but in those days it felt like Apple Laptops were from a different planet, except they were unreasonably slow in large part because they were stuck on the G4 processor for years. Switching to intel was a necessity for survival. IBM just couldn’t deliver or keep up with what Intel was doing.
pram 3y ago
The G5s had to have impressive cooling lol

etempleton 3y ago

That is kind of the thing. The whole Mac Studio only consumes ~200 watts. It is what I find about this article to be disingenuous. Sure, by all means compare the M2 Ultra to the Intel 13900K and the Nvidia 4080, but at least mention that it is consuming a third of the power.

florakel 3y ago

It’s a fair point. Especially for the new Mac Pro they could have implemented a more robust thermal solution and clock the whole thing higher. That’s one advantage of a bigger chasis, isn’t it?

MBCook 3y ago
The took the giant overkill design meant to hold a hot Intel chip and possibly multiple big GPUs, and put a M2 Ultra in it. It’s overcooled. There is no way it’s thermally limited. It’s got to have headroom for days. I’m very curious where this idea I keep seeing in the comments that Apple refuses to run chips at full speed for cooling reasons comes from.
- florakel 3y ago
  The current Mac Pro is kind of pointless. Before you got a powerful workstation (power consumption was irrelevant), now you get a Studio Mac in a new package. I feel they just launched it for “compliance” not because it is a great product. They hit a wall with scaling the M chip architecture. Building an even larger chip than the Ultra would be insane and going multi socket is not possible.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    They need a product for people who need expansion slots for non-GPU things, and it fits that. I agree that it’s likely they wanted to use the quad M2 chip (jade 4 C die, if I remember the term correctly), which would have given them far more PCIE lanes and made it more desirable. But that doesn’t seem to have worked out. And the lineup had a whole they needed to fill for some of their top end customers. So here we are.

wmf 3y ago

AFAIK none of the desktop Macs are thermally limited.