From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932247AbWJCOlB (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 Oct 2006 10:41:01 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932263AbWJCOlB (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 Oct 2006 10:41:01 -0400 Received: from pentafluge.infradead.org ([213.146.154.40]:56192 "EHLO pentafluge.infradead.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932247AbWJCOlA (ORCPT ); Tue, 3 Oct 2006 10:41:00 -0400 Subject: Re: BIOS THRM-Throttling and driver timings From: Arjan van de Ven To: Keith Chew Cc: linux-kernel In-Reply-To: <20f65d530610030729o42658bd6hcc204f8deac4a33e@mail.gmail.com> References: <20f65d530610030729o42658bd6hcc204f8deac4a33e@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain Organization: Intel International BV Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 16:40:36 +0200 Message-Id: <1159886437.2891.532.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.2.3 (2.2.3-2.fc4) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by pentafluge.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 2006-10-04 at 03:29 +1300, Keith Chew wrote: > Hi > > We have a motherboard that has Thermal Throttling in the BIOS (which > we cannot disable). This causes the CPU usage to go up and down when > the CPU temperature reaches (and stays around) the Throttling > temperature point. > > What we would like to know is whether this will affect the timings in > drivers, eg the wireless drivers we are using. What can we check in > drivers' code that will tell us that its operations may be affected > the throttling? > > In the past few days, we noticed that some of the linux units we > deployed freezes after deveral hours of operation, we are now trying > to reproduce the problem in our test environment. Some insight on the > affect of throttling will help us narrow down the search. Hi, in general linux should be ok with this happening. However for specific cases... you'll need to provide more information; you're not mentioning which drivers you are using for example. Or even which versions of the kernel etc etc.... (also: if you actually HIT throttling, there is something very very wrong; you're not supposed to hit that unless the fan is defective, but never in "normal" healthy operation. If you do hit it without hardware defects then there is most likely a fundamental airflow problem you'll want to fix urgently) -- if you want to mail me at work (you don't), use arjan (at) linux.intel.com