The launch of Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro series, with its lauded A17 Pro CPU and titanium frame, has not gone as smoothly as Apple would have hoped. Apple’s latest CPU is expected to herald the arrival of the latest AAA games, which would normally only be available on gaming consoles and PCs, for the first time on the iPhone. Titanium was expected to maintain strength while reducing weight and providing a more premium look and feel. However, some are wondering if the two new features of the iPhone 15 Pro are dangerous.
Shortly after buyers received their new iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models, reports began circulating on social media that their new iPhones were prone to overheating. This could happen while you’re having a phone conversation, charging your phone, playing games, or doing other common activities that typically don’t cause iPhones to get too hot to touch. However, it should be noted that not all consumers have encountered these types of problems with their new iPhones. An iPhone 15 Pro Max model we have available has not shown any of the overheating issues that some consumers have reported.
According to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, the heating issues experienced by iPhone 15 Pro users are most likely due to the lack of an optimized cooling system, ruling out any causal factors related to the A17 Pro chip or the new TSMC 3 nm (N3B). – “Basic” manufacturing process. Kuo attributes the failure to a “reduced heat dissipation area” and the “use of a titanium frame.” Titanium doesn’t dissipate heat as well as steel, so as a result, more of the heat created by the internal parts of the phone would have to be dissipated through the rear glass panel.
In 2021, Kuo revealed that Apple was “aggressively testing” vapor chamber cooling for a future iPhone. However, we have yet to see an iPhone equipped with this technology. Vapor chamber cooling is used in many flagship Android phones to keep devices with high-performance CPUs cool. The thermal difficulties faced by some consumers could have been reduced in part, if not entirely, if Apple had included a vapor chamber in addition to the graphite used in the iPhone 15 Pro for cooling. Given that the iPhone 14 Pro also saw a drop in performance under sustained loads as a result of Apple’s minimalist approach to iPhone cooling systems, it’s surprising that Apple hasn’t opted for a more robust approach this time around, despite the move to one supposedly more efficient. (and therefore cooler operation) 3nm TSMC node.
Despite Kuo’s claim that the A17 Pro or TSMC’s new 3nm process are not to blame, there are still concerns about the role these may play, especially since many iPhone 15 Pro users are not experiencing any issues. even though all models use the same graphite-based thermal solution. Apple had reserved most of TSMC’s production capacity for its new N3B node, as die reduction often results in significant benefits in performance and/or efficiency. However, it was claimed that TSMC had experienced many difficulties with in-node chip manufacturing, with functional chip yields relatively low at only 55%. This can lead to greater variability in chip performance, known as the “silicon lottery,” which could explain why only certain users encounter problems.
Another feature of TSMC’s 3nm process that is causing concern is the company’s continued use of FinFET technology. While FinFet has served TSMC well up to the 5nm and 4nm scales, it is known to have scaling challenges due to concerns with current leakage control and resulting overheating. TSMC has implemented certain technological efforts to alleviate this and other related concerns, but it seems that they have not been able to eliminate them completely. Samsung Foundry is another OEM that has started producing 3nm circuits, but it uses a different process. Despite a number of issues with its node technology in recent years, Samsung has adopted the GAA (Gate All Around) approach, employing its own implementation known as MBCFET (Multi-Bridge-Channel FET). GAA is commonly considered the superior technology at these scales because it provides much better power management, among other advantages.
TSMC also claimed that its 3nm node would perform 15% better and consume up to 35% less power than its N5 node. However, Apple’s claims about the A17 Pro at the launch of the iPhone 15 Pro indicated that CPU performance would only be around 10% faster and battery life would be around the same as the series. previous iPhone 14 Pro, despite slightly larger battery capacities in the new one. iPhone 15 Pro models. This shows that TSMC’s 3nm node did not meet the company’s expectations. It’s also worth noting that, even though the A17 Pro chip has around 3 billion more transistors than the A16 chip, Apple has had to increase the CPU clock on the A17 Pro’s performance cores to 3. 79 GHz, compared to 3.46 GHz for the A16 Bionic chip. , to achieve performance increases. This could lead to overheating issues and also explains why there has been little improvement in battery life despite the much-hyped new 3nm process.
The new GPU design in Apple’s A17 Pro chip is another key power-consuming component that requires further analysis. According to Apple, it’s the most significant GPU architecture redesign since the company began building Apple silicon, and includes hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading capabilities. To demonstrate how powerful the new GPU is (which is said to be 20% faster than the A16 GPU), Apple has partnered with prominent PC gaming publishers to bring current AAA games to the platform, including Death Stranding, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 4. Flagship titles for PC and consoles have long been available on the iPhone; However, Resident Evil Village is only available on new iPhone 15 Pro models and iPads with M1 chip or later.
However, there are also considerable doubts about the new GPU. According to The Information, Apple had planned to introduce this GPU architecture in last year’s A16 Bionic chip, but it was canceled at the last minute. Which is the reason? GPU prototypes were prone to overheating and consuming excessive power. The mistake was thought to be the biggest ever made by Apple’s silicon team, which at the time was also losing a large number of talented chip engineers to startups or other corporations. Apple undoubtedly worked on the design in the following months before the new GPU architecture arrived in the A17 Pro. Its engineers most likely thought that reducing the die to a supposedly more efficient node would alleviate any residual overheating. and power consumption issues if it worked as predicted.
We used the industry-standard cross-platform 3D Mark Wild extreme stress test on our iPhone 15 Pro Max, which runs a graphically demanding loop for 20 minutes. It evaluates the sustained performance of a chip’s GPU, which is an important indicator of how long a device will run at a given level. This is especially essential for those using graphically demanding programs, such as games, which Apple has touted as a key feature of this year’s Pro models. As shown in the “Performance Rank” chart below, the iPhone 15 Pro Max outperforms the iPhone 13 Pro Max we also had available.
The A15 Bionic chip in the iPhone 13 Pro is manufactured on TSMC’s well-known 5nm node (N5P). Despite the A15 Bionic’s worse overall performance in terms of frame rate, as expected given its older GPU design, its sustained performance profile is remarkably comparable to the A17 Pro, with both starting to experience difficulty maintaining performance around 130 seconds. spot. Surprisingly, the sustained performance characteristics of the old N5P process are quite similar to those of the new N3B technology. Notably, even with its older battery, the iPhone 15 Pro’s battery life dropped by 10% during the test, as did the iPhone 13 Pro.
This implies that there are no discernible efficiency advantages between GPU nodes or architectures, despite TSMC’s claim of up to 35% efficiency gains over its N5P node. It’s also worth noting that the A17 Pro was less stable during the test, at 67% versus the A15 Bionic’s 73.6%. These are not the types of results one would expect to see from a chip with a newer architecture in a declared cutting-edge and more efficient node. Rather, it reflects the ‘silicon lottery’ mentioned above, which becomes even more obvious when returns are low.
In terms of heat, both the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro were warm to the touch, but our iPhone 15 Pro Max wasn’t unusually warm, unlike other iPhone 15 Pro Max models with similar benchmarks. What was evident was that the titanium frame of the iPhone 15 Pro Max was cooler to the touch than the steel frame of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, which was to be expected given the different thermal conductivity properties of the two materials. This implies that the design of the iPhone 15 Pro would require additional heat dissipation through the glass. However, considering that not all iPhone 15 Pro units overheat, and while a more robust cooling solution was probably necessary, it shows that the fault lies elsewhere, rather than in the thermal design.
Other possible causes of overheating on some iPhone 15 Pro models could be third-party apps that have not yet been optimized for iOS 17, which are installed on some users’ devices but not others. Alternatively, the issue could be related to issues with system software and firmware on versions of iOS 17 that are specific to certain markets. If a malicious app is causing the problem, checking the battery settings of an app that may be consuming too much power and CPU cycles and removing it if you find it could be a solution. If it is an OS-related issue, Apple will likely release a patch to fix it in the near future. If the problem is hardware related, Apple must first recognize it before launching a special service program to resolve it.
If you want to buy an iPhone 15 Pro but are worried about the cost, buying it from an official Apple company or another company with a free return policy is your best chance. The waiting game begins for people who have an affected iPhone 15 Pro but can’t return it.
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Categories: Technology
Source: vtt.edu.vn