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Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

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Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#21

Post by givinguflac »

coldtea wrote: post #17
kstenerud wrote: post #5

They have to. Any time my MBP is working really hard, say, compiling, or talking on skype, or watching a video, or loading a web page, or browsing the filesystem, the fan ramps up like a turbine. It gets so bad that the microphone can't accurately pick up my voice.

I have an MBPr and do frequent 1080p/4k renders that utilize all 4 cores to max, and I can barely hear the fans...

Seriously. I use SMCfancontrol to run the fans at max most of the time, and I can't tell they're even running unless the room is very quiet. The new fans in the rMBP's are great.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#22

Post by DigitalJack »

ianbertolacci wrote: post #2

Is there a timeout?

yes. I've got 3 cores pegged now, fan shuts off for a few seconds and if I don't say anything it bails and the fans come back.

just takes about 10 seconds.

edit: I was able to keep activating siri and have the fans off while 4 cores pegged for quite a while. I don't know if CPU throttling kicked in or not, not sure how to check.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#23

Post by givinguflac »

DigitalJack wrote: post #20
alexbock wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using an older model that hasn't been cleaned in a while? I use an early 2013 15" MBP and the only time I ever hear the fans is when I'm doing compilation with 8 threads (100% CPU usage on all four cores).

I've got a 2015 15" mbpr, and it doesn't take much for the fans to reach noisy speeds. one core pegged will do it after a few seconds. I run into this a lot with the new docker daemon. edit: just timed it (yes > /dev/null), it takes about 60 seconds of one core pegged to ramp up the fan to audible. And I'm used to silent so audible is noisy to me. Two cores pegged gets loud.

Honestly it sounds like you may want to get your fans checked out. Or perhaps you work in a totally silent environment? Loud is of course subjective, but my rMBP has the quietest laptop fans I've ever used.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#25

Post by ianbertolacci »

mikeash wrote: post #19
ianbertolacci wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, I cant imagine that they'd forget something like that. Certainly on my iPhone Siri stops listening, which should on the PC restart the fan. I would be very entertained if you could melt chips with an overly patient Siri.

I'd assume it wouldn't be a timeout, but a higher temperature threshold. If the machine is on the verge of melting already then you wouldn't want to turn off the fans at all.

Thats a good point, and I hope thats what they do. Im not Mac OS familiar, can other applications ask Siri to listen in? If they pause fans regardless of temperature, then it would be interesting to see if damage could be caused by an app running hot then repeatedly going to Siri.

I bet theres a way to test their cutoff mechanism. Maybe someone could run some serious bench-marking apps (maybe more CPU bound ones) and see if Siri still kills the fan at high temperatures.

Could someone potentially damage their very expensive machine to satisfy my curiosity?

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#26

Post by ianbertolacci »

DigitalJack wrote: post #22
ianbertolacci wrote: post #2

Is there a timeout?

yes. I've got 3 cores pegged now, fan shuts off for a few seconds and if I don't say anything it bails and the fans come back. just takes about 10 seconds. edit: I was able to keep activating siri and have the fans off while 4 cores pegged for quite a while. I don't know if CPU throttling kicked in or not, not sure how to check.

We were also wondering about existing temperature conditions. For example, I might be running some super benchmark that pegs the core temperature high. What happens when Siri turns on? If it still shuts down the fan thats bad. I could potentially keep prompting Siri (to turn off the fan) and drive the temperature a bit higher.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#27

Post by jxy »

jxy wrote: post #6

Does it stop the CPU hungry process too?

Why the down votes? Isn't it important? If I'm running some CPU intensive processes, I would hope it could send a SIGSTOP to the process so it wouldn't burn itself.

Throttling CPU frequency would help, but I expect siri needs some CPU too.

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#28

Post by jbb555 »

ianbertolacci wrote: post #25
mikeash wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd assume it wouldn't be a timeout, but a higher temperature threshold. If the machine is on the verge of melting already then you wouldn't want to turn off the fans at all.

Thats a good point, and I hope thats what they do. Im not Mac OS familiar, can other applications ask Siri to listen in? If they pause fans regardless of temperature, then it would be interesting to see if damage could be caused by an app running hot then repeatedly going to Siri. I bet theres a way to test their cutoff mechanism. Maybe someone could run some serious bench-marking apps (maybe more CPU bound ones) and…

You are unlikely to cause any damage, although you might make the CPU speed throttle right down

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#29

Post by jrowley »

DigitalJack wrote: post #20
alexbock wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using an older model that hasn't been cleaned in a while? I use an early 2013 15" MBP and the only time I ever hear the fans is when I'm doing compilation with 8 threads (100% CPU usage on all four cores).

I've got a 2015 15" mbpr, and it doesn't take much for the fans to reach noisy speeds. one core pegged will do it after a few seconds. I run into this a lot with the new docker daemon. edit: just timed it (yes > /dev/null), it takes about 60 seconds of one core pegged to ramp up the fan to audible. And I'm used to silent so audible is noisy to me. Two cores pegged gets loud.

I'll echo you that my 2015 15" mbpr really screams the majority of the time. I probably should do a fresh install with the latest OS but moving files around is such a pain.

Maybe we are in quiet environments and notice them more than other people?

Re: Tell HN: MacOS turns off the fans when Siri is listening

#30

Post by DigitalJack »

ianbertolacci wrote: post #26
DigitalJack wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. I've got 3 cores pegged now, fan shuts off for a few seconds and if I don't say anything it bails and the fans come back. just takes about 10 seconds. edit: I was able to keep activating siri and have the fans off while 4 cores pegged for quite a while. I don't know if CPU throttling kicked in or not, not sure how to check.

We were also wondering about existing temperature conditions. For example, I might be running some super benchmark that pegs the core temperature high. What happens when Siri turns on? If it still shuts down the fan thats bad. I could potentially keep prompting Siri (to turn off the fan) and drive the temperature a bit higher.

I don't have an app for monitoring cpu temps right now, and don't know if there is a CLI way to do it.

I was able to keep the fan off for probably a minute before I stopped. I am interested to find out if intel's cpu throttling kicked in.

edit: installed Intel Power Gadget.

with 4 cores pegged (4 actual cores), the CPU was turbo-boosted (3.0GHz on my laptop). As I prevented the fans from running via Siri, the cpu throttled back to normal rated speed. Temperature varied by a few degrees C hovering around 99C. I did this for approximately a minute or so.

It didn't go below the rated speed (2.5GHz on my laptop).

edit2: I did it again with 4 cores pegged and 4 HT cores pegged. It didn't throttle below 2.5, but I did see that the "yes" processes were throttled back. when I glanced before stopping, they were all at 80% instead of 95+%

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