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Apple Confirms MacBook Pro Thermal Throttling, Issues Software Fix (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: For a week, we have been seeing reports that the newly released MacBook Pros run hot, which all kicked off after this video by Dave Lee. They run so hot, in fact, that the very fancy 8th Gen Intel Core processors inside them were throttled down to below their base speed. Apple has acknowledged that thermal throttling is a real issue caused by a software bug, and it's issuing a software update today that is designed to address it.
The company also apologized, writing, "We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems." Apple claims that it discovered the issue after further testing in the wake of Lee's video, which showed results that Apple hasn't seen in its own testing. In a call with The Verge, representatives said that the throttling was only exhibited under fairly specific, highly intense workloads, which is why the company didn't catch the bug before release. The bug affects every new generation of the MacBook Pro, including both the 13-inch and 15-inch sizes and all of the Intel processor configurations. It does not affect previous generations.
The company also apologized, writing, "We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems." Apple claims that it discovered the issue after further testing in the wake of Lee's video, which showed results that Apple hasn't seen in its own testing. In a call with The Verge, representatives said that the throttling was only exhibited under fairly specific, highly intense workloads, which is why the company didn't catch the bug before release. The bug affects every new generation of the MacBook Pro, including both the 13-inch and 15-inch sizes and all of the Intel processor configurations. It does not affect previous generations.
Why would it be less? Apple's reported battery life is with the CPU at full performance, not throttled down - remember they said they had not seen that case. So it means Apple's battery life figures (usually very realistic) are based on the CPU operating at normal speed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
QUOTE: "representatives said that the throttling was only exhibited under fairly specific, highly intense workloads" Sure, exporting video from Adobe Premiere Pro. Clearly an unusual workload.
It's amazing how remorseful companies are when they get caught doing something silly :|
Here's a thought:
Fix it before you release it to the public and you won't have to apologize and tarnish your reputation.
It was actually Intel's fault. They didn't change the TDP for the 6-core CPUs. MacRumors has a more complete (and less biased) Report, encompassing three Articles:
https://www.macrumors.com/2018...
https://www.macrumors.com/2018...
https://www.macrumors.com/2018...
Fortunately, it didn't require a hardware rev. to fix...
Kudos to Apple for getting right on this issue, instead of issuing denials. No "You're holding it wrong" here!
According to the official statement from Apple (emphasis mine):
Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro.
So, it sounds like they forgot to digitally sign their firmware, which led to the fans or whatnot refusing to take orders, which led to the system running far too hot. That's why they're able to fix it with a software update in the first place.
Except, the CPU was not overheating. The throttling did not happen because of the CPU
The CPU is powered by a Voltage Regulator Module (power delivery module). It turns out it is this chip that is overheating - when the CPU is going full tilt, it's demanding 125W from the VRM. This causes the VRMs to heat up and when they get close to their maximum thermal limits, they send a signal to the motherboard telling it to throttle the CPUs so they draw less power so the VRMs can cool down.
Part of thermal tuning is to adjust the CPU boost speeds such that it can boost to full speed, then throttle down slightly as the VRM and CPU heat up to a new max steady-state condition where the heat generated can be dissipated.
This is in part due to a documentation error in Intel's docs regarding max thermal power dissipation values.
The good news is if you tweak the throttle settings properly, you can keep the regulators from overheating, but the CPU still performing. This is what Apple did - they optimized the settings so the VRMs will not overheat and force a sudden throttling of the system. Doing this gives you a good 20% speed boost over the old models.
The bad news is if this was caught earlier so Apple could heatsink the VRMs to the CPU like they do with the GPU, you could get up to another 10-20% in performance because you can run the boosts longer since the VRMs would heat up slower.
It's amazing how remorseful companies are when they get caught doing something silly :|
Here's a thought:
Fix it before you release it to the public and you won't have to apologize and tarnish your reputation.
...so basically, for any sufficiently complex venture involving human beings, never release it to the public.
Truth. It still confounds me that people don't understand the idea that these projects don't have unlimited time and budget to fix every issue imaginable before release. Speaking generally, not all companies and actors are inherently evil (though if left to their own devices many would trend that direction). If I spent the amount of time and/or resources that some people demand working on finding every single tiny issue (that a lot of times get blown out of proportion) then either the end result would be so ungodly cost prohibitive that no one would buy it or the resultant would be obsolete by the time it could be released.
I have a pretty strong dislike of Apple and admittedly only passing familiarity with this particular issue, but it is unfair to jump to that conclusion they didn't do any due diligence and just shoved the product out the door. This particular issue, there is a good chance that it was simple oversight or failure to perform proper QA procedure, making the chastising for this a bit more valid. It is also very possible that they genuinely did what they would normally and missed an issue. I'm not making an excuse for them, but without tangible evidence that they were being sloppy this is really an unfair assessment.
"It was actually Intel's fault. They didn't change the TDP for the 6-core CPUs."
The i9 SKU was intentionally designed to have the same TDP as the 4-core i7 SKU.
Not changing the TDP isn't a mistake, it's the entire point. None of the MacRumors articles you link to support your implication that not changing the TDP was a fault.
Confounded or not, it's poor practice to release a product without sufficient testing to ensure it's going to perform as expected.
I'm not just picking on Apple either. It seems in a rush to get the product out the door, many companies do a half-assed job at testing their products because the current attitude is " We'll just issue a fix later and blame the junior programmer ". This is especially evident in any game / software that's released today.
It is for this reason I typically wait at least six months before buying whatever new " thing " it is I'm buying to ensure the unpaid beta testers have done their job and identified all the bugs that were still present on release.
Either way Apple is culpable as well. In fact many of those mac rumor comments support that position. Apple's hands are not clean here.
All hardware ships with buggy software to some degree or another. And this is extremely minor as it exhibits itself under very specific scenarios and in most cases artificial workloads and the end result is a slightly slower CPU and nothing else. We're not talking about a data leak here. This only makes the news because every tech "journalist" is looking for the latest Apple scandal to garner a bunch of clicks / views.
It would have been much, MUCH worse for Apple to miss their hardware release date. No company, when faced with a choice of shipping hardware with a minor software bug that can be patched later, and slipping a hardware release would choose the latter.
User: The computer is slowing down when it gets too hot
Engineer: Yes
User: You sold us something that is not performing as expecting
Engineer: We told marketing about this, too. This was not a good idea.
User: We want full power.
Engineer: Okay, enjoy your third degree burns then.
Marketing: Let's call it a "software fix". Fucking engineering at it again ruining our reputation
User: Everything is melting but I gained 20 seconds on a video render! Yay thanks Apple!
Thank you for providing a detailed explanation. I appreciate being educated instead of berated.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
"very specific scenarios" "artificial workloads"
This is marketed as a high-performance laptop, yes? The sort of machine to be used for heavy workloads like video editing, so why wasn't it tested under the workloads it's supposed to be good for?
Video editing is exactly one of the things this is aimed at. Rendering is a normal part of VE, so it's not a very specific scenario, nor is it an artificial workload.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
What was the chain of missteps that enabled what can only be called an engineering fiasco?
* AMD's high performing 8 core Ryzen's selling like hotcakes, Intel gets envy.
* i9 rushed to market
* The reason Intel didn't release an 8 core desktop processor in the first place: sucky thermal envelope, and no time to fix the process
* Marketing solution: lie about the power envelope in the spec sheet
* Apple getting shade for obsolete laptop lineup just as PC market showing signs of life
* Apple rushes Macbook refresh to market
* Apple engineers believe Intel's specs, design the VRM too small.
* Apple project manager telescopes the project by cutting out the QA stage
* First production units show significant issues
* QA fudges the problem resolutions for team player reasons
* Product already shipped to retail, just got to cross fingers and hope for the best
* Unhappy customers are not fooled
* Oops.
See, it starts with Intel's well known process issues then envy and hubris take it from there. Apple should pull this product and re-engineer it. Dump the remaining stock for a discount as befits the low performance. Apologize for the mistake. Next one should be AMD.
Apple isn't going to do any of that. "You're holding it wrong."
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
If Apple held the parts back longer for testing, people would bitch about how Apple's offerings are behind their competition.
And people would be right in both cases. The underlying problem is, Apple management consciously decided to let the PC offerings rot because that revenue is shrinking while handset revenue is growing. However little sense that makes, that's what they did, then one day they suddenly woke up, saw they needed the PC revenue to make the next quarterlies, and panicked to the extent that best practices were thrown out the window in the rush to catch up from a place they never should have been in.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Even if it was an error in the Intel data-sheet, didn't Apple actually *test* this machine under load before they released it?
Did they not see for themselves that there was severe thermal throttling going oin and say "that's not right" - before sending it back to the lab for some changes?
It would appear not.
So, you think that this fiasco is not because of Apple management panicking and forcing a impossibly short timeframe on engineering, so best practices practices were tossed to the wind? See, everybody else who offers Intel's 8 core part puts it in a realistic enclosure. Apple management seemed to think they could wave a magic wand and change physics.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.