Well, we should not confuse frequency scaling with throttling. I.e. my cpu can run at 1800 MHz and 1200MHz and when idle it runs at 1200MHz. However, when doing work such as compiling, the cpu jumps of course to 1800MHz and produces maximum heath because it is at 100%.
Throttling is the process of inserting wait states into the cpu so it is idle at a certain % of the clock cycles (while the frequence is still 1800Mhz). So, after such a slow down event, my cpu still happily switches between 1200 and 1800 MHz when needed (which is what the battery icon shows), yet the problem is 75% of the speed is gone due to the throttling.
For a cpu doing work at 100%, 60 degrees seems, well, certainly not low, but also not the temperatures where I expect bad things to happen.
Message Edited by dmantione on 07-15-2007 10:22 PM
My CPU stays at half speed until it gets a load demanding more speed. (maybe 2% of the time) and then it jumps up to full speed. Yours might be similar to this. Your CPU might just stay throttled back until it needs to speed up again. But if you are having heat issues, it might never really speed back up. As soon as it does, it gets hot again and throttles back.
It sounds like throttling is saving your CPU from a burn up. I'd get your heat problem fixed before I tried to configure throttling. Get the vents and CPU professionally blown out.
Then, check out the battery icon on your task bar. Click restore and check these settings.
Throttling is under ACPI, you may want to turn on ACPI_DEBUG if you are managing your kernel on your own.
I cannot set throtting on my D610 portable, Intel Pentium M CPU with Intel chipset, via /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling. It is always stuck at T0.
It looks like it is limited to T0 in /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/limit on my system. What do you read in there? You may have to deal with the limits first. Linux is open source, you may always read the source code to see what we can do with the limits.
I guess the BIOS may have the final say.
Anyway /proc/acpi is kind of deprecated according to the kernel config menu. Therefore cat'ing into /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling may become deprecated...
The new big item on the menu is CPU frequency scaling.
I use cpufreq-set to set the governor policy on my portable. I know that cpufreq scaling is not the same as throttling. However if we can keep the CPU nice and cool by frequency scaling, throttling may normally be unnecessary.
I am really impressed with my new desktop being a lot cooler and quieter than my older ones. There is even a 64bit graphical utility for linux from the CPU manufacturer. It scales both cpufreq and core voltage, the same way as under windows.
You may want to try cpu frequency scaling if you have not already done so.
dmantione
5 Posts
0
July 15th, 2007 19:00
Throttling is the process of inserting wait states into the cpu so it is idle at a certain % of the clock cycles (while the frequence is still 1800Mhz). So, after such a slow down event, my cpu still happily switches between 1200 and 1800 MHz when needed (which is what the battery icon shows), yet the problem is 75% of the speed is gone due to the throttling.
For a cpu doing work at 100%, 60 degrees seems, well, certainly not low, but also not the temperatures where I expect bad things to happen.
Message Edited by dmantione on 07-15-2007 10:22 PM
ant2ne
22 Posts
0
July 15th, 2007 19:00
My CPU stays at half speed until it gets a load demanding more speed. (maybe 2% of the time) and then it jumps up to full speed. Yours might be similar to this. Your CPU might just stay throttled back until it needs to speed up again. But if you are having heat issues, it might never really speed back up. As soon as it does, it gets hot again and throttles back.
It sounds like throttling is saving your CPU from a burn up. I'd get your heat problem fixed before I tried to configure throttling. Get the vents and CPU professionally blown out.
Then, check out the battery icon on your task bar. Click restore and check these settings.
Noms
7 Posts
0
August 1st, 2007 17:00
I cannot set throtting on my D610 portable, Intel Pentium M CPU with Intel chipset, via /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling. It is always stuck at T0.
It looks like it is limited to T0 in /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/limit on my system. What do you read in there? You may have to deal with the limits first. Linux is open source, you may always read the source code to see what we can do with the limits.
I guess the BIOS may have the final say.
Anyway /proc/acpi is kind of deprecated according to the kernel config menu. Therefore cat'ing into /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling may become deprecated...
The new big item on the menu is CPU frequency scaling.
I use cpufreq-set to set the governor policy on my portable. I know that cpufreq scaling is not the same as throttling. However if we can keep the CPU nice and cool by frequency scaling, throttling may normally be unnecessary.
I am really impressed with my new desktop being a lot cooler and quieter than my older ones. There is even a 64bit graphical utility for linux from the CPU manufacturer. It scales both cpufreq and core voltage, the same way as under windows.
You may want to try cpu frequency scaling if you have not already done so.
Good luck.