Linux 6.11 Adding Fan Speed / Temperature & Charge Control Drivers For The ChromeOS EC

The Chrome platform changes for Linux 6.11 as code predominantly for enabling Chromebooks with the mainline Linux kernel is set to introduce two new drivers.

The first new driver is "cros_ec_hwmon" as a new driver for exposing the fan speed and temperatures of modern Chromebooks under Linux as well as other devices making use of the open-source ChromeOS EC. The cros_ec_hwmon interfaces with the ChromeOS Embedded Controller when in an LPC-connected EC configuration. Notably this new driver works out for the Framework 13 AMD Ryzen laptop that makes use of the ChromeOS EC and has been successfully tested with this new code.

Going back seven years ago was an attempt at adding a ChromeOS EC HWMON driver but never followed up on and now this new driver is finally ready for mainline with Linux 6.11.

The other new Chrome platform driver this cycle is "cros_charge-control" for enabling control charge thresholds. The ChromeOS Embedded Controller supports a command to control charge thresholds and behavior. This is now exposed to user-space via sysfs similar to other laptops supporting battery charge thresholds.

Both of these new ChromeOS EC drivers were worked on by Linux developer Thomas Weißschuh.

More details on these two new drivers plus other Chrome platform changes ready for Linux 6.11 can be found via this pull request.