It is interesting in its own right. The only thing that appears similar is a flat centrifugal fan type, and that's not new idea. It appears to only have one blade angle interval, rather than an asymmetrical blade pitch. Apple's patent is about a very specific pattern of blade spacings, just the article either doesn't say that or says it poorly.
Why does the article say "without reducing performance???".
It's been well documented that the GPU in the rMBP is quite heavily throttled (made worse by a "software update" that was eventually pulled by apple) specifically because the machine doesn't have adequate cooling to run it wide open. The computer gets too hot because the fans and case are not properly designed to allow the computer to operate without reducing the performance of the components via software throttling.
So "without reducing performance" is totally false; the design of these fans requires reducing performance.
It's not likely the fan design that requires dropping the performance. Dynamic clocking is a standard feature in both CPUs and GPUs.
The following links suggest it's that Apple is just underclocking sooner than necessary so it shouldn't be anything to do with the design:
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[URL]http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/sandias-floating-spinning-heatsink-promises-30x-better-cpu-cooling-20120625/[/URL]
It is interesting in its own right. The only thing that appears similar is a flat centrifugal fan type, and that's not new idea. It appears to only have one blade angle interval, rather than an asymmetrical blade pitch. Apple's patent is about a very specific pattern of blade spacings, just the article either doesn't say that or says it poorly.
It's not likely the fan design that requires dropping the performance. Dynamic clocking is a standard feature in both CPUs and GPUs.
The following links suggest it's that Apple is just underclocking sooner than necessary so it shouldn't be anything to do with the design:
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/11/13/some-15-retina-macbook-pro-users-complain-of-graphics-issues-after-efi-update
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1432352
The temperatures being reported are fine and the issue doesn't seem to affect everyone the same.
One thing for sure is that the fan design seems to have taken away the higher pitched noise you can hear on the 2011 model:
[VIDEO]
and just leaves a sound of rushing air, which is much more tolerable:
[VIDEO]