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Date:      Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:38:40 -0400
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
To:        freebsd-acpi@freebsd.org
Cc:        David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org>
Subject:   Re: How/why would dev.cpu.0.freq_levels change??!?
Message-ID:  <200806281738.40672.jhb@freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <20080627235319.GP70792@bunrab.catwhisker.org>
References:  <20080627235319.GP70792@bunrab.catwhisker.org>

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On Friday 27 June 2008 07:53:19 pm David Wolfskill wrote:
> My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 8200; I (ab)use it moderately heavily:
> this includes tracking RELENG_6, RELENG_7, & HEAD on it, daily.
> 
> Lately there have been some times when "make buildworld" for RELENG_6
> has taken a lot longer than it used to ... and I noticed that the
> fans were on, even though it was running fairly cool (around 50C;
> during a "make buildworld, around 85C is more common) -- and that
> the machine was typically "topping out" at half speed (1200 MHz).
> 
> During these times, querying dev.cpu.0.freq_levels would yield a list
> that did, ini fact, max out at 1200 MHz, when I know that it has gone up
> to 2400 MHz in the past.
> 
> When it does this, the only circumvention I've been able to find is a
> power-cycle.  Since I like to minimize disruption, this is annoying.
> 
> This afternoon, it showed evidence of doing this stunt again, so I
> carefully logged out, powered the machine off, waited about 5 minutes,
> then powered it back on.
> 
> But this time, I decided to fire up a little loop to display a timestamp
> and the ooutput from "sysctl -n hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature
> dev.cpu.0.freq dev.cpu.0.freq_levels" every 5 seconds.
> 
> Here's the interval in question:
> 
> 1214609737,60.5C,300,2400/0 2100/0 1800/0 1500/0 1200/0 1050/0 900/0 750/0 
600/0 450/0 300/0 150/0
> 1214609742,59.5C,450,2400/0 2100/0 1800/0 1500/0 1200/0 1050/0 900/0 750/0 
600/0 450/0 300/0 150/0
> 1214609748,59.5C,450,2400/0 2100/0 1800/0 1500/0 1200/0 1050/0 900/0 750/0 
600/0 450/0 300/0 150/0
> 1214609752,57.5C,150,2400/0 2100/0 1800/0 1500/0 1200/0 1050/0 900/0 750/0 
600/0 450/0 300/0 150/0
> 1214609757,57.5C,600,1200/0 1050/0 900/0 750/0 600/0 450/0 300/0 150/0
> 1214609762,56.5C,150,1200/0 1050/0 900/0 750/0 600/0 450/0 300/0 150/0
> 1214609767,56.5C,150,1200/0 1050/0 900/0 750/0 600/0 450/0 300/0 150/0

Looks like it lowered the temperature.  Your BIOS might have decided to change 
the levels to force the CPU to throttle down to cool the system.

-- 
John Baldwin



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