On 9/26/2023 5:02 PM, badgolferman wrote:
Mickey D <[email protected]> wrote:
Ming-Chi Kuo from TFI Securities says that it's not likely that the rampant >> iPhone 15 overheating problem is due to the TSMC 3nm A17 Pro chip.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidphelan/2023/09/26/apple-iphone-15-pro-overheating-reports-insider-addresses-issue/
Kuo goes on, The primary cause of the iPhone 15 overheating design flaws is >> more likely the multiple compromises made in the thermal system design to
achieve a lighter weight, such as the reduced heat dissipation area and the >> use of a titanium frame, which negatively impacts thermal efficiency.
They’ll fix it by throttling the performance.
That would be bad, considering how they have marketed it.
Remember, the iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max are the first iPhones that Apple
marketed as gaming devices. One article stated "To be exact, Apple
claimed that the GPU of the iPhone 15 Pro models can natively run
console games. And now that the device is officially out, it’s time to
put that claim to the test. Well, it looks like Apple wasn’t lying; the
A17 Pro can indeed run console games. As a matter of fact, it can offer
a decent gaming experience." <
https://www.gizchina.com/2023/09/22/iphone-15-pro-gaming/>.
"As you probably know, there's the display resolution and then there's
the gaming resolution, and then the frame rates, the game rendering,"
Sandmel responded. "With technologies like MetalFX's upscaling, we can
sort of separate those two things." <
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/09/20/apple-on-iphone-15-pro-the-best-game-console-is-the-one-you-have-with-you>.
The reality is that the A17 is a quantum leap in terms of CPU and GPU performance and that comes at the expense of higher TDP (thermal design
power).
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has been widely quoted as stating that the
cause of overheating is not related to the TSMC's 3nm process in the new
A 17 Pro chipset. That much is true. But the overheating _is_ related to
the higher TDP of the A17. Even though the A17 is manufactured on the
3nm process, versus the 4nm process for the A16, you don't get a 25%
decrease in power per transistor because leakage power goes up and you
end up losing most of the gain from lower dynamic power. There's a good
graph of this at <
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/uploads/articles/Static_power_consumption_is_becoming_increasingly_relevant_as_chips_scale_down.jpg>.
The advantage of the smaller geometry is being able to fit more
transistors on the die, it's not power reduction as it was in the past,
and more transistors mean higher power. The A16 has 16 million
transistors. The A17 has 19 million transistors, an 18.75% increase at
the same time as the change to a frame material with poorer thermal conductivity. The clock rate is also likely higher, which increases
thermals even more. By contrast, the Intel Core i9-1900K has 2.95
billion transistors.
The iPhone 16 Pro/Pro Max is certain to address the thermal issues that
are present on the iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max. They are expected to have
larger displays (6.3" for the Pro and 6.9" for the Pro Max) so the
device will be physically larger so heat spreaders can be larger.
Combined with an improved thermal solution there likely won't be the
level of hot spots that are present in the 15 Pro and Pro Max.
Remember that the 15 Pro and Pro Max are the first iPhones specifically
aimed at the gaming market so they need to be able to support sustained operation at the processor's maximum frequency. I've seen the "real
life" rationalization pop up again recently, insisting that most people
won't use their iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max in a way that maximizes power consumption, but that demonstrates a lack of understanding of how these
things actually are intended, and marketed, to be used. If the non-Pro
iPhones had used the A17 then the higher-power devices could have been
used in those devices without experiencing the thermal issues since they
still use stainless steel for the body and because they don't have the
higher frame rate that uses more power.
Sadly the only real way to address the overheating issue, in the short
term, is to throttle the A17 to the level where the thermal solution is
capable of dissipating the heat.
--
“If you are not an expert on a subject, then your opinions about it
really do matter less than the opinions of experts. It's not
indoctrination nor elitism. It's just that you don't know as much as
they do about the subject.”—Tin Foil Awards
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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