Comment 51 for bug 370173

James,

I apologize as it appears you are *correct* about the embedded controller and firmware - could it be that the hardware is expecting some type of control from the OS? Could it be that the firmware was not designed to regulate the temperature independent of the OS (assuming the OS is also governing CPU speed, GPU, etc?)

However - disengaging the fan control (thus allowing the fan to run full speed) does "solve" heat the issue for me. I have experienced no thermal shutdowns and the laptop runs *much* cooler.

The top fan speed on the T61 is about 5000 rpm. If you monitor the fan speeds while running stress, you'll see that regardless, the fan never goes over much more than about 3000 rpm and frequently does not run at all!

Is it unreasonable to think that one ought to be able to let the laptop run in performance mode, on AC power, with an application running the cpu at or near 100% and not experience temps in excess of 100C? This is why I don't accept the CPU governance issue as this should only be a function of keeping the laptop quiet and extending battery life (or perhaps pleasing the more 'green minded' among us). Other than modifying the hardware or over-clocking the cpu or gpu beyond spec, it shouldn't be possible to overheat... Perhaps that assumption is not valid?

For the mean time, I'm experiencing normal temps with fan control disengaged. I'm happy with this solution for the time being, but I agree it would be great to know the real issue and have a fix.

You are correct on the auto mode leaving it up to the firmware. Hats off.

Cheers,

Charley