He focuses early on with overkill on the cooling — could it be that Apple knew this was a tradeoff, knew it would tend to not push the power envelope, but wanted a cooling system that would let them leave the general design unchanged for years to come, with lots of headroom for future cpus? Why call it an error when there is an actual reason that makes sense as an explanation?
Unlikely. Historically Apple has always designed cooling with very narrow margins around suppliers TDP due to internal pressure to create smaller and smaller machines, which has often resulted in underclocking due to GPU vendors downplaying their TDP requirements.
From the explanation it sounds like an artificial limitation. The chip is technically capable of being saturated with the current design given an optimal program, and fulfilling it's TDP, at which point the current cooling system design would be _entirely necessary_ for the current chip design. This is clear from the second tweet:
> Mac Studio cooling system is OVERKILL in most apps
My emphasis added (not all apps in theory - but practically)
True, but Apple generally do care about either size or quietness. Starting with the G5 cooling system they started to exchange a lot of the former for the latter in their large desktops. I expect that is the case here (i've not actually seen a picture of this thing) - However this doesn't mean they designed the cooling system extra large margins, that's just not their attitude, unlike PC vendors they control all the components they can be more exact (Saying this as quite the opposite of an Apple fan boy).
Point is, the cooling system overcapacity is due to expected (but generally not fulfilled) TDP, rather than adding arbitrary large margins.
Yes, although it's worth noting that they seem to have rowed back on this a little bit in their recent designs. The new MacBook Pros are cooler due to the processor being cooler, but they also have feet to allow better airflow under the machine at the clean flat bottom of the previous models (IMO they still look great, but I can't see Apple of a few years ago making that decision).
Their new CPU architecture certainly is more power efficient compared to x86s they replaced in many ways which means they aren't up against such a wall to compete on performance, perhaps a combination of circumstances have caused them to produce more thermally comfortable machines in recent years. I'm not sure how long this will last though... in that sense I'm sure they do have relaxed TDP margins, so i'm basically arguing about the subtlety of this not being an intentionally large margin... now I look like i'm splitting hairs :P but it's clearly a mistake from the analysis of the GPU.
I don't think it is overkill. Hypothetically, there are apps that will load the M1 Ultra beyond 120W; they just haven't been written yet. If such apps exist in the future the cooling will be needed.
I also figured it had been designed so that it could be quiet - if you can keep the volume of the cooler large enough then you can use slower fans right?
The cooling system has to be designed for when users attach devices to those Thunderbolt 4 ports _and_power_them from it.
That shouldn’t produce much heat inside the unit (they claim the power unit can continuously deliver 370W. Guessing 95% efficiency and 200W delivered over those buses it can’t lose more than 10W), but may just push it over some edge.
On one hand, I agree with you on the headroom since cooling has become far more complicate than just putting a fan so you really don't want to redesign over and over again. But on the other hand, from what I heard, the cooling on the Ultra edition is super heavy. So in that sense, it's indeed slightly overkill.
