Intel Publishes PCIe Bandwidth Controller Linux Driver To Prevent Thermal Issues

Intel engineer Ilpo Järvinen posted a set of Linux kernel driver patches to introduce a new "bwctrl" PCI Express Bandwidth Controller driver and associated PCIe cooling driver to allow for limiting the PCIe link speed in the event of any system thermal issues.

The 700+ lines of new code posted today are for allowing the PCI Express link speed to be reduced in the event of any thermal issues. The new driver code creates a cooling device for each PCIe port that the service driver finds if they support manipulating the PCIe link speed.

This code will automatically throttle the PCI Express bandwidth when thermal thresholds are reached. Or setting the thermal state to "0" will yield no throttling with always running at the maximum supported PCIe speed.

Those interested in this new Intel Linux driver code under review can find the patches on the kernel mailing list.