A VR developer made a really attention-grabbing discovery about how Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional units its cooling fan velocity, and thus thermal-based efficiency limits.
Because the computational load will increase, processors warmth up. Ultimately a thermal restrict shall be reached at which level the processor should deliberately cut back its peak efficiency to proceed functioning, or shut down. To keep away from this consequence, units with lively cooling progressively enhance the fan velocity as warmth will increase with the intention to cut back the temperature and preserve peak efficiency.
With Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional nonetheless, temperature would not appear to be the one consider setting the fan velocity. In response to Max Thomas (aka Shiny Quagsire), the primary developer of the visionOS port of the SteamVR streaming instrument ALVR, the headset additionally units the utmost fan velocity primarily based on how loud the followers are, measured with the headset’s microphone array.
lolll I discovered the reply, I used to be getting fucked by the userexperienced. Apparently it dictates thermal limits primarily based on fan limits, and it units fan limits primarily based on *how a lot it hears the followers within the mics*
If I blast white noise, fan speeds keep at max + no throttle pic.twitter.com/k2pqRmccKd
— Shiny Quagsire (@ShinyQuagsire) June 23, 2024
The thought is presumably that in louder environments, these with extra ambient noise, the followers shall be tougher to listen to. So the general purpose of making certain you hardly ever hear any followers might be maintained whereas maximizing efficiency.
This all results in the weird conclusion that Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional ought to carry out higher in noisy environments than in quiet ones, as a result of in quiet environments the fan velocity shall be restricted, and thus the system will throttle efficiency at decrease temperatures.
Thomas stated he was capable of confirm this by blasting white noise, making it tougher for the microphones to listen to the followers.
We’re not conscious of another gadget that works like this, and it is one other instance of the eye to element – or overengineering relying in your viewpoint – current in Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional.
