keeping CPU usage low
Atis
atissita at btv.lv
Thu Sep 15 16:52:44 PDT 2005
On Thu, 15 Sep 2005 12:11:59 -0400
Charles Swiger <cswiger at mac.com> wrote:
> On Sep 15, 2005, at 11:36 AM, Atis wrote:
> > Is there a way to make the kernel HALT the CPU regularly even
> > when it has got runnable processes? Sort of like increasing the idle
> > thread priority?
> >
> > The problem is with one my computers which has a buggy CPU. No
> > matter how many or how powerful fans I install, when there's
> > a CPU usage of 100% for over ~5 minutes it just overheats
> > and crashes the system.
>
> If your system hardware supports ACPI power management, you might be
> able to use the powerd/cpufreq stuff to throttle your CPU to a lower
> speed. You might also try underclocking the CPU in your BIOS and/or
> or set it to a lower clock divider depending on the details of what
> your hardware supports.
>
Yes, thank you, the powerd/cpufreq thing does what I need.
I can set the cpu frequency via sysctl.
Well, it's not entirely perfect since on this machine it allows only
two frequencies:
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 1739/-1 869/-1
A more software-related solution with the kernel halting
execution would be somewhat cooler, but then again,
I probably don't need it :)
Atis
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