Plus, if you thread the cable through your hot dog, it will be warm in time for lunch.
Meanwhile, Apple's M1 chip is showing us that 240 watt laptops are the problem, not the solution...
Meanwhile, Apple's M1 chip is showing us that 240 watt laptops are the problem, not the solution...
Myself and most people I know always considered USB connection to be safe-ish - that is, you can keep the cable connected on the supply side, and have the receiver end just lie on the desk on the floor, and the worst that could possibly happen is some tiny sparking if the stray end touches something conductive in a very unlucky way. But the more power I see pushed through these cables, the more I start to look at them as live wires hooked to mains power.
Additionally, such wattage sounds like a serious fire hazard if the cable is damaged, which means the cables themselves need to be handled with care. Something that wasn't the case with typical USB charging until recently.
I have very little worry that my carpet can accidentally negotiate 60w and up.
I _am_ worried about cheap USB-PD devices that forgoe this negotiation as it is complex and expensive to implement.
If you buy a fake cable that pretends to have display-port alternate mode or something but doesn't, meh, you're out 10 bucks. But if it pretends to be able to carry 200 W but isn't and burns your house down instead, you might be out a tad bit more...
USB-PD has bidirectional communication, so at least in theory both ends could know how the cable is performing by comparing voltage and current measurements at either end.
If the cable drops too many Watts, the load can be disconnected.
As I've commented elsewhere, I wonder if, at that point, there still is that much of a point in sticking with USB-C for what seem like fairly specific applications.
I mean, if we're at the point of carting around such a monster of a laptop, will an additional, dedicated, power-only connector make that much of a difference? Don't get me wrong, I'm actually somewhat tempted by such a thing, but just because it would be easy no move around, not for actually carrying on my back all day every day.
There are some mitigations though, like the cables must identify what they can handle (else the high current modes can't be used), and both ends needs to verify the plug and cable etc.
In theory though I don't see why they couldn't include this in the standard.
What I don't understand is how the cable doesn't have a way to detect a short circuit. I'd imagine that a 250 watts capable cable would have more safety features hopefully though.
Yes. Moving critical safety limits into software? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 Let's hope they're all up to the challenge ...
It's a good question. Generally speaking, DC is considered a shock hazard at or above 60V, but OSHA recognizes 50-60V as being potentially hazardous. It's certainly an arc hazard when disconnecting as the article notes. And 5A at just about any voltage will start a fire in case of a short circuit.
In practice, I find the loss of convenience compared to USB-C negligible. You still only have one cable hanging around.
Plus, as those are PCs, said connector wouldn't even need to be something specific, I suppose a random (big enough) DC barrel plug would do and be compatible with different manufacturers' products.
For me, my monitor powers my laptop.
More specifically, my two 32" 4K monitors are plugged into the wall, and then both have USBC cables into each side of my 16" MBP (2019). I keep my MBP power cable in my suitcase for when I travel.
I love the setup - only two cables on my desk, and there is a nice symmetry about it.
I also have an Intel desktop computer with a thunderbolt port. I'm able to switch from my desktop to my laptop with just one cable.
It still has a few rough edges, but overall it works better than anything else I've tried.
Paying $700 for a monitor was a bit painful but I have no regrets.
Feeding the Caldigit dock I have a thunderbolt cable going to my laptop (a 2019 Macbook Pro) and i have a second thunderbolt cable run from my desktop (A HP Z4 with a thunderbolt card) which i can swap in at a moment's notice if I need more horsepower or want to play games etc.
Thunderbolt for both computers enables a single cable setup. It really is super convenient
M1 GPU beats most other integrated GPUs, but that doesn't magically make the demand for more performance go away, and that demand is likely to increase as there become more and more non-gaming applications for GPUs (machine learning, video editing, etc).
The Mac has a very dedicated audience of video and design professionals who are going to be left empty-handed here, even if they double or triple the amount of GPU cores in the SOC.
I've seen no evidence that the M1's GPU is anything but best in class for integrated graphics.
[0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M1-GPU-GPU-Benchmarks-an... [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-RX-Vega-8-Ryzen-400...
No, it was a technology limitation. The reason I know is because of the M1 Macbook Pro, a device explicitly designed to reap the maximum performance benefits of the M1. It was designed with active cooling and still didn't really manage to score much better than the M1 Macbook Air.
Either way, Apple can't just magically increase the wattage of their chip and make it run faster. They had every opportunity to do that in the M1 Mac Mini and the new iMac, but they didn't. It's a very obvious limitation of the SOC's capabilities, and I honestly can't find any evidence to suggest otherwise.
>Apple can't just magically increase the wattage of their chip and make it run faster.
Because that is not how it works.
The M1 GPU has a maximum TDP of 11W. That is by design. They could push it with higher Clockspeed beyond their optimal level with higher voltage, but that has other testing and reliability implication with cost. It doesn't matter whether you have a large Fan and heat sink sitting on top of or no cooling. You run at 11W Max. That is part of the design. M1 MacBook Air would allow it to run 11W for a fraction of time before heaving TDP headroom to CPU. MacBook Pro allows it to use at its maximum for longer. Since it has a 25W cooling capability.
You want higher GPU performance, throw in more Core. GPU workload are inherently parallel, the only limitation are interconnect and Memory bandwidth. Both of these are are not technical barrier but cost concern.
On a 10W GPU comparison ( And why would you compare GPU that are running at higher watts ) The Apple GPU are doing fairly well in all Metal optimised benchmarks. Compare to AMD Radeon GPU which also has been optimising on Mac platform. ( Although at a larger node )
My friend recently purchased a MacBook Air with M1. There's no fan at all. It's incredible. It's a block of metal that just works.
The M1 Macs are the first and lowest-end Apple Silicon Macs we'll see. There's a reason they only replaced the cheapest devices with them so far - wait until we're done with the 2 year transition period and I doubt you'll have anything to complain about.
(Sometimes a desktop is not practical, like on a remote photo assignment, but there is a power outlet.)
Because there's a upper limit on how much power (voltage, clock rate, etc) you can shove though a CPU before it starts malfunctioning or getting damaged by purely electrical effects, no matter how effectively it's cooled?
It's entirely possible Apple has set the nominal limits fraudulently low for business reasons, but there are actual physical limits here, and depending on how the CPU is designed/optimized, it's quite possible that it's easy to build a cooling system that significantly exceeds what those limits allow to be demanded of it in a significant range of cases.