RE: [SLUG] CPU suspend mode in Linux?

[John Wiltshire <jw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Arunava Sen [mailto:thedweller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

>Yesterday, a friend of mine mentioned that he is using some win98
>program that "cools" his cpu and that it drops his temperature by 6
>degrees when idle. I assume it issues a 'hlt' instruction or something
>similar. The interesting thing is that the program's help file said
>something like "this program is not needed on winNT and many 
>non-windows
>OSs because they have this functionality built into them".
>
>To me it sounds like Linux might have it buils into the kernel. How can
>I verify this (short of rummaging through the kernel source) and does
>anyone know for certain?

NT4sp3+, Win2000 and Linux all execute a HLT instruction when idle on a
single CPU machine.  I'm pretty sure there are issues with SMP machines that
means you have to busy idle.

John Wiltshire