Platform Profile Support Coming For Newer Dell/Alienware Laptops With Linux 6.13

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 4 November 2024 at 06:33 AM EST. 2 Comments
HARDWARE
Select newer Dell/Alienware laptops with a "WMAX" thermal interface will see ACPI Platform Profile support now exposed with the upcoming Linux 6.13 cycle.

Newer Dell laptops like the Alienware X-Series, Alienware M-Series and Dell's G-Series laptops feature this new WMAX thermal interface. This interface was reverse-engineered by open-source developers to enhance the Linux support for these laptops. From the pending kernel documentation on the Dell WMAX interface:
"The WMI device WMAX has been implemented for many Alienware and Dell's G-Series models. Throughout these models, two implementations have been identified. The first one, used by older systems, deals with HDMI, brightness, RGB, amplifier and deep sleep control. The second one used by newer systems deals primarily with thermal, overclocking, and GPIO control.

It is suspected that the latter is used by Alienware Command Center (AWCC) to manage manufacturer predefined thermal profiles. The alienware-wmi driver exposes Thermal_Information and Thermal_Control methods through the Platform Profile API to mimic AWCC's behavior.

This newer interface, named AWCCMethodFunction has been reverse engineered, as Dell has not provided any official documentation. We will try to describe to the best of our ability its discovered inner workings."

With a driver patch now queued within platform-drivers-x86.git's "for-next" branch, the Platform Profile support is added for the WMAX interface present on those Dell/Alienware laptops. With the Alienware Command Center not being available for Linux, the Platform Profile support on these laptops hasn't been available outside of Windows until now.

Alienware logo


The related Alienware WMI patches are also in the platform-drivers-x86 for-next branch making all of this material for the upcoming Linux 6.13 kernel.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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