shamino

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shamino
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  • Adding water cooling to the Mac Studio does surprisingly little

    shaminoshamino
    chadbag said:
    Water cooling by itself doesn't boost performance.  It gives you expanded headroom to change and boost performance parameters.
    Yes, but maybe not.  That was definitely true in the old days when CPUs ran at a fixed clock speed.  Extra cooling would allow you to boost the clocks without overheating the chips, but you don't get more performance unless you actually do boost these frequencies.

    But modern CPUs have variable frequencies, even in their stock configurations.  They run at a baseline frequency, but they will "turbo boost" to higher frequencies when software demands more performance.  They will also run at reduced frequencies when idle.  When temperatures get too high for the cooling solution, they will "thermally throttle", limiting the maximum frequency they can boost to, the amount of time they can run at boosted frequencies, and may (if necessary) even force it to run at frequencies below the baseline.

    With modern chips (at least high-end ones from Intel and AMD), an air-cooled system generally can't keep up with the thermal output of the chip running at its maximum turbo boost frequency.  When you add more/better cooling, the CPU can remain boosted for longer periods of time before throttling, and therefore perform better overall.  With enough cooling so the CPU never throttles, it can remain running at its boost frequency pretty much all the time, which is pretty much as good as it will get without "overlocking" (that is, increasing the maximum boost frequency beyond manufacturer specs).

    And if you've got a separate GPU, all of the above applies to it as well.

    What the Linus experiment proves is that Apple's air-cooling system is sufficient to prevent thermal throttling even when the M1 is running at its maximum performance.  So extra cooling won't benefit it unless you figure out a way to overclock it beyond what the stock air-cooler can handle.  Which we could have predicted, because prior tests show that the Mac Studio doesn't experience thermal throttling under load.

    This is in contrast to (as the video mentioned) a MacBook Air, where the completely passive cooling system isn't sufficient.  If the M1 in there is pushed hard, it will thermal-throttle.  Improving its cooling (e.g. with a fan, as with the MacBook Pro, or with some Frankenstein water cooling system like Linus is fond of) will improve performance, because the CPU will be able to run at maximum load for longer (perhaps indefinitely) before throttling.
    roundaboutnowFileMakerFellerchadbagelijahg

  • Ex-Apple engineer explains why the first iPhone didn't have copy and paste

    shaminoshamino
    Beats said:

    shamino said:
    Apple may have been the first to deploy these technologies on a consumer device, but they didn't invent it.

    Before there was any iPad/iPhone, we were all fascinated by multitouch UI demos produced by Jeff Han (researcher at NYU and founder of Perceptive Pixel, which was since acquired by Microsoft).  For example:

    I don't think Apple ever used Jeff Han's code, and modern multitouch display panels use a completely different technology from what Han was using, but I can guarantee that lots of important people there (like the rest of us) saw these videos and drew inspiration from them.  Including swiping, scrolling and pinch-to-zoom operations.

    Dismissing the hard work of Steve Jobs and Apple engineers because crappy resistive touch screens existed is ludicrous. I was heavy into futuristic cell phones in 2007 and had the highest rated Windows Mobile Phone and it was absolutely garbage compared to what iPhone brought. None of the ideas of Windows Mobile carried over to iPhone and it had none of the cool iPhone inventions like pinch to zoom. There were arrows everywhere in the UI and there was a “calibrate” setting I had to revisit every few days. This was a super high-tech phone in 2007, mobile keyboard and all!
    You didn't actually read anything I wrote, did you?  I didn't say anything about resistive screens or Windows phones.  Where you did you get the idea that I did?

    Jeff Han was not a Microsoft employee at the time.  He was a researcher at NYU, where he developed a lot of the fundamental research behind multitouch interfaces.  He published video demonstrations of his research over a year before Apple announced anything of the sort.  He was using a unique hardware system involving glass panels, cameras and projectors - which nobody else has ever used - but that's irrelevant.  The point is not the digitiizer but all of the user interface concepts that he developed in order to show the usefulness of multitouch.

    I get the impression that you hadn't actually watched his videos when they were published in 2006 and 2007.  You should go watch them now in order to understand what I'm talking about.

    Again, Apple did a tremendous amount of work to bring the iPhone to market, but to claim that they invented the underlying UI concepts like multitouch interfaces is to deny history.
    sphericfastasleepBeDifferent

  • Apple's legendary Clarus the dogcow returns in macOS Ventura

    shaminoshamino
    I also miss flying toaster. Not sure if that’s the Apple thing or Toast thing. 
    Neither.  Flying toasters were a part of the After Dark screen saver software, made by Berkeley Systems.


    JWSCravnorodomdarkvaderwatto_cobramaltzmknelsonjeffharris

  • Relive the 2012 hit 'Angry Birds' rebuilt from the ground up for modern devices

    shaminoshamino
    Interestingly, it appears that its predecessor (the original Angry Birds, as a free download with ads and in-app purchases) is no longer in the app store.  It doesn't even show up in my purchase history on the phone where I have it installed.

    On the other hand, $1 for the full game, including the Mighty Eagle (which is a $5 in-app purchase on the ad-supported version) is a great deal for a really fun game.
    byronlFileMakerFeller

  • Compared: Mac Studio versus Mac Pro

    shaminoshamino
    If the rumors about the 4-way connectivity module (M1 Ultra-Max?) prove to be true, then that module would support up to 256 GB of RAM.  Which may be enough for the entire Mac Pro market.

    Or they may introduce a new kind of module (M2?) that can support more.

    Another possibility, which might make sense if they think there are enough customers that want truly huge amounts of RAM (e.g. >1TB) is that the on-module unified memory will behave as a cache to a much larger amount of external DDR5 RAM.  You'd be able to run the Mac without any DIMMs, using only the unified memory (in the M1 module) or with DIMMs, if you have a need to go beyond that amount.

    Similarly, if Apple believes that Mac Pro customers really need PCIe slots, there's enough bandwidth to support them, even allowing external GPUs to run alongside the built-in GPU/NN units.  But I think that is less likely.  I think that if Apple decides to support PCIe slots (and this is far from certain), that they will primarily support hardware that doesn't replicate what the M1 module has on-board (e.g. advanced networking and storage peripherals, professional multi-channel video capture, and other such things).

    But this is just my opinion.  I could be wrong.
    watto_cobra