dptf

Wait, what? From reading the git repos a bit, it seems that Lenovo and Intel have created some framework that is, in its default state, modifying the thermal MSRs every five seconds via SMI (presumably). Let that sink in. Somehow, rather than letting the CPU run with reasonable parameters and letting the EC control fans as needed, they are forcing the system into SMM (which interrupts everything on all cores) to fiddle with thermal parameters. And they want some ridiculous user space library (DPTF) to reconfigure this mess to actually do something sensible. WTF edit: Wow, the Intel code in question is hilariously enterprisey. Check this out: https://github.com/intel/dptf/blob/master/DPTF/Sources/Polic... and that repo is full of files like SuchAndSuchFacadeInterface.h. I swear that at least 95% of the code doesn’t do anything. Maybe 99%.

That seems like only half of the story. Earlier in that thread, there's this quote from lenovo: " Due to "DPTF" function will act on Windows system by BIOS/Driver support, the system will turn to cool mode when keep high temperature several minutes. But Linux system didn't have driver support DPTF function, it only have TDP limit on platform. So user should have different between Windows and Linux system as normal behavior." So lenovo is doing something conservative because DPTF isn't officially supported on linux. There seems to be a DPTF repo here: https://github.com/intel/dptf