Linux 5.12 Bringing DTPM So You Don't Burn Yourself On Hot Devices

Linux 5.12 pull requests continue coming in for the newly-opened merge window that in turn should see its stable release in late April.

Linux power management maintainer Rafael Wysocki of Intel submitted the updates on Monday along with the routine ACPI updates. On the power management front most notable is the introduction of the Dynamic Thermal Power Management (DTPM) framework after missing out on 5.11 landing plus there are a lot of other miscellaneous updates throughout this important area of the kernel with modern devices.

- Dynamic Thermal Power Management is landing a a big addition and complements the existing Linux Power Capping Framework. This was the framework originally trying to get into Linux 5.11 late but rejected by Linus Torvalds. A focus of the DTPM is ensuring users don't burn themselves on hot laptops / devices. At this stage DTPM is primarily focused on ARM Linux device support. DTPM introduces the notion of aggregate power constraints for a set of devices, such as for restricting the power for a set of devices if the surface temperature is becoming too warm.

- Intel Alder Lake mobile support was added to the Intel RAPL power-capping driver.

- Fixing the maximum CPU frequency discovery for the Intel P-State driver.

- Boost support for the Qualcomm hardware CPUFreq driver.

- The cpupower tool within the Linux kernel tree now has support for AMD Zen 3 processors.

See the full list of power management changes via this pull request. There is also the ACPI updates albeit not any really notable end-user changes this cycle.