Apple may reduce the performance of the 3nm A17 Pro processor due to massive overheating of the iPhone 15 Pro

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 261 points –
Apple may reduce the performance of the 3nm A17 Pro processor due to massive overheating of the iPhone 15 Pro
gagadget.com

Apple may reduce the performance of the 3nm A17 Pro processor due to massive overheating of the iPhone 15 Pro::The problem of overheating of iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max smartphones is becoming widespread. It is possible that Apple will be forced to take the unpopular step of reducing the performance of the latest 3nm A17 Pro chip.

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How does something like this not show up in tests?

It does.

Usually engineering and R&D sees these things, but they are too scared to contradict ambitious timelines set up by management.

Or they report it to their managers, and those managers are too afraid to report it up the chain to contradict an ambitious timeline.

Or they do report it up the chain but upper management doesn't care and gamble that users won't notice or encounter the issue.

lol hardly

Imagine engineering teams accounting for actual user behavior. No, this is on testing and the product development teams.

They just figured oh well it works well in Cupertino. They omitted the fact that Cupertino doesn’t get super hot, ever.

oof i can’t imagine using it in my country where it’s 30 degrees celcius and above on average everyday.

oof i can’t imagine using it in my countryApple's home state, California where it’s 30 40+ degrees celcius and above on average everyday in summer, and Death Valley has pretty much the world record.

I mean if they didn't test it in Cali I wouldn't know where at all...

California is a big state with lots of different climates. The bay area doesn't typically get that hot.

I haven’t noticed a heating issue and I live in a very hot climate. So, it’s not universal.

My 15 pro max is cold all the time, I haven’t played any 3d games yet though. It was cold during restore process and it’s cold when charging

Yeah I’ve not had problems on any of my families 15 or 15 Pros, however my iPad Air 5 got hot af last night installing iOS 17 and I ended up putting it in a stand and pointing a fan at it lol

People have used it in very hot areas and it has been fine, with no overheating issues.

People have used it in very temperate areas and it has turned into a small furnace.

The controlling variable is almost certainly not ambient temperature.

I can assure you it did, they just hoped no one would notice

I could see a case made for the test units having much better heat transfer and once mass produced the silicon lottery inevitably made some chips run hotter. But those variances are not massive, so it would've already had to run pretty hot. IDK

When developing a product you order "process corner" chips that are primarily used for testing the memory timings (through a process called Shmoo) to make sure it is stable. The "FF" class of these chips are also useful for testing thermals as they draw the maximum power you will see with the silicon lottery. So assuming Apple did this properly they should have had a good idea of what the product temperature is at the operating temperature extremes.

It does. But what is hot to me is different than what is hot to my wife. My 11 pro gets really hot if you fast charge it.

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