Trixology

General Category => General Computing/Macintosh => Topic started by: elagache on July 21, 2018, 09:26:35 PM

Title: New MacBook CPU throttling as example of high tech "maturation pains,"
Post by: elagache on July 21, 2018, 09:26:35 PM
Dear WeatherCat observers of high tech,

There is an interesting analysis on the slashgear website of Apple's latest MacBook Pro and the problems some observers have seen with the machine limiting its CPU performance to limit the machine's propensity to overheat:

https://www.slashgear.com/2018-macbook-pro-core-i9-heat-throttling-intel-tdp-roadmap-19538228/ (https://www.slashgear.com/2018-macbook-pro-core-i9-heat-throttling-intel-tdp-roadmap-19538228/)

The key observations from the piece are in these two paragraphs:

The blame can?t all be placed at Apple?s feet, though, at least according to the latest theories. The design of the current MacBook Pro was first revealed in late 2016, but will have been in development for several years before that. Apple will have worked with Intel on exactly how much cooling was required in order for its laptops to work at peak performance.

That, though, depends on Intel?s roadmap for its processors, and it?s there where some have suggested things have struggled. Intel has had some widely-reported challenges getting its chips down to the sizes it initially promised, with its transition to 10nm processes taking far longer than it initially hoped for. That also means that the TDPs it was aiming to achieve ? and the TDPs with which Apple undoubtedly designed the MacBook Pro?s cooling in mind ? simply haven?t been achieved.


This is an example of how the highly vaunted "high tech" industry is struggling with the reality that they are not an infinite source of genius ideas.  Moore's law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law) clearly no longer holds true as the physical limits of silicon are starting to be reached.  Any reasonably educated person should have understood that information technology had limits driven by the materials and scientific processes that make it possible.  Yet not only the people inside the industry but our society in general have "hoped" for an endless stream of innovation.  It is one of those moments when we catch the educated people of the Western world being considerably less rational than they would like to think of themselves.

Cheers, Edouard