New Thermal Library, "Thermometer" Tool Proposed For Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New Thermal Library, "Thermometer" Tool Proposed For Linux

Linaro is proposing a thermal library that interfaces with the Linux kernel's thermal framework. As part of this is also a thermometer utility for user-space that would live within the Linux kernel source tree for monitoring the thermal data...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Thermometer-RFC

[mazumoto]

I think I like this. It sounds like it'd be possible to write a nice, vendor-agnostic GUI with this. Maybe - as a next step - there could be something similar for managing fans ...

[ezst036]

Will this be interfacing with things such as k10temp? If so, I hope they can have some fixes committed because some don't report temperatures correctly.

[ferry]

Reporting temperatures and visualizing is one thing. But another is to use the data to control the CPU efficiently.

Yesterday evening I found that while building the linux kernel my machine is actually faster when I limit the CPU clock to 4100 GHz (max turbo boost is 4800GHz). The reason is that at max boost the CPU heats up, the fan ramps up to 3000rpm, the CPU heats up further to 80C, then turbo is disabled and clock goes to 3300GHz and stays there for the rest of the build, while fan speed is reduced. So, yes, less noise, but longer build time.

When I restrict to 4100GHz, CPU temp stays below 80C and turbo remains until the end of the build.

Note this is desktop, no battery life to consider.

[microcode]

Will this be interfacing with things such as k10temp? If so, I hope they can have some fixes committed because some don't report temperatures correctly.

The interfaces are driver-agnostic, you get this stuff through procfs/sysfs regardless of which driver is supporting it.

[CochainComplex]

tbh ....i would be fine with a systemd implementation

[Quackdoc]

this could be really nice