Showing posts with label intel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intel. Show all posts

Monday, October 19, 2015

Intel Graphics Installer For Linux 1.0.4 Available For Download [Ubuntu 13.10 And Fedora 20]

The Intel Linux Graphics Installer was updated to version 1.0.4 and the new version supports Ubuntu 13.10 and Fedora 20.

Intel Graphics Installer for Linux

The Intel Graphics Installer for Linux is a tool developed by Intel that allows users to easily upgrade to the latest graphics drivers for Intel hardware. The installer automatically adds a repository used for upgrading the packages provided by Intel - that means that besides the Intel Linux Graphics Installer, you can also use the Ubuntu Software Updater, apt-get, etc. to upgrade the packages.

Intel Linux Graphics Installer 1.0.4 was released about two weeks ago but I didn't get to write about it when it when it was released and then the website stopped working. Sorry for the delay!

The latest Intel Linux Graphics Installer 1.0.4 brings the 2013Q4 Intel Graphics Stack which includes OpenGL 3.3 API support, Fast Boot support and power savings features, among many other changes. A complete list of changes can be found HERE.

Important note: The Intel Linux Graphics Installer does not support Intel GMA 3600 "due to the complex package dependencies of the binary graphics drivers for the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3600 Series used in the Intel Atom Processor N2600 Series and Intel Atom Processor N2800 Series" - use the drivers available with your Linux distribution instead.


Download Intel Graphics Installer for Linux


This hasn't happened for some time, but I'll add this note anyway: in the past, this installer caused some serious issues for some users so I suggest you only use it if you know how to downgrade the packages in case something goes wrong.

I couldn't test the installer because it's only available for Ubuntu 13.10 and I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.

If you have questions about the installer or Intel Linux graphics, visit the Intel Linux Graphics forums.


The installer itself doesn't work in Ubuntu derivatives like Linux Mint however, you can manually add the repository if you're using a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 13.04 - see THIS article for how to add it.

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Saturday, October 17, 2015

Intel Linux Graphics Installer 1.0.3 Released For Ubuntu 13.10 And Fedora 19

Intel has released an update for for its Linux Graphics Installer, available for Ubuntu 13.10 and Fedora 19.

Intel Linux Graphics Installer

The Intel Linux Graphics Installer is a tool developed by Intel that allows users to easily upgrade to the latest graphics drivers for Intel hardware. The installer automatically adds a repository used for upgrading the packages provided by Intel - that means that besides the Intel Linux Graphics Installer, you can also use the Ubuntu Software Updater, apt-get, etc. to upgrade the packages.

The latest Intel Graphics Installer 1.0.3 for Linux brings the latest Intel Graphics 2013Q3 Stack, which comes with support for Solid Intel Celeron N2810 processor with Intel HD Graphics support, SNA enabled by default and power savings improvements for 4th Generation Intel Core processors with Intel HD Graphics. There's a huge list of improvements so check out the official release notes for more information.


Download Intel Graphics Installer for Linux


Before downloading and installing this package, please note that in the past, this installer caused some serious issues for some users so I suggest you only use it if you know how to downgrade the packages in case something goes wrong.

I couldn't test the latest Intel Linux Graphics Installer because it's only available for Ubuntu 13.10 and I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.

If you have questions about the installer or Intel Linux graphics, visit the Intel Linux Graphics forums.


The installer itself doesn't work in Ubuntu derivatives like Linux Mint however, you can manually add the repository if you're using a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 13.04 - see THIS article for how to add it.

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Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Prevent Your Laptop From Overheating With Thermald And Intel P-State [Updated]

intel logo

Linux Thermal Daemon (thermald) is a tool developed by Intel's Open Source Technology Center which monitors and controls the CPU temperature, preventing it from overheating.

Thermald tries to prevent the CPU from overheating without a significant impact on performance by using some specific Intel functions available in the Linux Kernel. According to the Ubuntu wiki, thermald can control cooling using:
  • active or passive cooling devices as presented in sysfs
  • the Running Average Power Limit (RAPL) driver (Sandybridge upwards)
  • the Intel P-state CPU frequency driver (Sandybridge upwards)
  • the CPU freq driver
  • the Intel PowerClamp driver

It's worth mentioning that thermald applies various cooling methods only when the temperature reaches a certain threshold, so you may not notice a difference while using it if your laptop doesn't usually get very hot.

I couldn't find any information on what processors are supported by thermald on its official page, but according to a Debian wiki entry, it's supported to support Intel Sandy Bridge and newer CPUs only. Also, according to a bug report, thermald is buggy / doesn't properly support Haswell.

By default, thermald runs in zero configuration mode so after installing it, you don't need to configura anything however, if your ACPI configuration is buggy or you just want to fine tune it by adding more sensors and cooling devices, you can edit the thermald XML configuration file, located under /etc/thermald/thermal-conf.xml For more information about this, see the thermal-conf.xml man page ("man thermal-conf.xml")


How to enable intel_pstate in Ubuntu 14.04 and newer


This is for Ubuntu 14.04 and newer only! Don't use it in older Ubuntu versions or you may encounter various issues (see below).

While it's not mandatory, thermald should work better if Intel P-state is enabled. Intel P-state is not enabled by default in Ubuntu 14.04, but you can enable it easily (from what I've read, it's enabled by default in Fedora, Arch Linux and OpenSUSE for instance).

intel_pstate is a new power scaling driver for modern Intel CPUs (it supports Intel SandyBridge+ processors). According to Arjan van de Ven from Intel (for more info, see the comments he posted HERE), ondemand shouldn't be used any more and instead, modern Intel processors should use Intel P-state.

In Ubuntu, pstate is disabled by default because it didn't work properly a while back. It looks like the issues that resulted in intel_pstate being disabled by default in Ubuntu were fixed, but pstate is still not enabled by default in Ubuntu 14.04.

Note that while I didn't encounter any issues on my laptop running Ubuntu 14.04 with intel_pstate enabled and from what I've read, it works for others as well, it might not work properly for you so use it at your own risk and only enable it if you know how to disable it in case something goes wrong!

1. To enable intel_pstate in Ubuntu 14.04 (only enable it if your laptop is using Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge CPUs), edit the /etc/default/grub configuration file with a text editor as root - I'll use Gedit below:
gksu gedit /etc/default/grub

And for "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=" (it's on line 11 on my system), add "intel_pstate=enable", like this:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash intel_pstate=enable"

Make sure you've changed the /etc/default/grub file properly or else your system may fail to boot! Once you're done, save the file and update Grub:
sudo update-grub

2. Restart your system and to check if intel_pstate is enabled, run the following command:
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_driver

The command above should return "intel_pstate".

To be able to use the "cpupower" commands below, you'll need to install "linux-tools-common" and "linux-tools-generic":
sudo apt-get install linux-tools-common linux-tools-generic

Another way of checking if Intel P-State is enabled is by using the following command:
cpupower frequency-info

And the output should be something like this:
analyzing CPU 0:
  driver: intel_pstate
  CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0
  CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
  maximum transition latency: 0.97 ms.
  hardware limits: 800 MHz - 3.10 GHz
  available cpufreq governors: performance, powersave
  current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 3.10 GHz.
                  The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
                  within this range.
  boost state support:
    Supported: yes
    Active: yes
    25500 MHz max turbo 4 active cores
    25500 MHz max turbo 3 active cores
    25500 MHz max turbo 2 active cores
    25500 MHz max turbo 1 active cores

If Intel Pstate is not enabled after following the steps above, it most probably means that your CPU doesn't support intel_pstate so you should disable it (simply remove "intel_pstate=enable" from /etc/default/grub and run "sudo update-grub").

3. With intel_pstate, there are only two cpufreq governors: performance and powersave (there's no "ondemand"). In my test, the "powersave" governor offered significantly better results so that's what I recommend. So try the powersave mode firstly and only if you're not satisfied with the results, switch to performance.

You can switch between the "performance" and "powersave" intel_pstate governors manually by using the following commands:

- use the "powersave" intel_pstate cpufreq governor:
sudo cpupower frequency-set -g powersave
- use the "performance" cpufreq intel_pstate governor:
sudo cpupower frequency-set -g performance

You can see the currently active cpufreq governor by using the following command:
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

4. If you want to make the "powersave" governor default in Ubuntu (using the commands above commands, the settings are lost after a reboot), firstly install cpufrequtils:
sudo apt-get install cpufrequtils

And then edit the /etc/init.d/cpufrequtils file and change GOVERNOR to "powersave" (GOVERNOR="powersave"). You can do this automatically by using the following command:
sudo sed -i 's/^GOVERNOR=.*/GOVERNOR="powersave"/' /etc/init.d/cpufrequtils
To revert this change and set the governor back to default (which is "ondemand" and that's not available for Intel P-State, but I'm adding this info in case you don't want to use Intel P-State any more), use the command below:
sudo sed -i 's/^GOVERNOR=.*/GOVERNOR="ondemand"/' /etc/init.d/cpufrequtils


It's also worth mentioning that TLP supports Intel P-State.


Install thermald


Thermald is available in the official Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10 repositories. To install it, use the following command:
sudo apt-get install thermald
Thermald should then start automatically.

Update: for Ubuntu 14.04, you can install the latest Thermald backported from Ubuntu 14.10 by using the failsdownloads Backports PPA. Or you can manually download the deb from HERE.

Thermald is not available for older Ubuntu versions but you can compile it from source.

Arch Linux users can install thermald via AUR.

For other Linux distributions, search for Thermald in your distro's repositories or compile it from source.

More info / references:

thanks to apater for the tip!
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i7z: Monitor Intel i7, i5 And i3 Frequencies, Multipliers And More Under Linux

I needed a tool for monitoring the CPU frequencies while testing thermald + intel_pstate, and stumbled upon i7z, so I though I'd share it with you, in case you're not familiar with it.

i7z is a tool that reports Intel Core i7, i5 and i3 CPU information about Turbo Boost, per core CPU frequencies, multipliers, temperature as well as times spent in the C0/C1/C3/C6/C7 states, all in real time.

The tool comes with both console (ncurses) and GUI (Qt) versions, however the GUI doesn't have all the features available in the console version and further more, the GUI incorrectly adds C7 state values to the C0 state for Sandybridge and Ivybridge, so it reports things incorrectly. The console version is recommended.



i7z also supports outputing the results to a log file - from the i7z help:
i7z Tool Supports the following functions:
Append to a log file:  sudo i7z --write a [OR] sudo i7z -w a
Replacement instead of Append: sudo i7z --write l [OR] sudo i7z -w l
Default log file name is cpu_freq_log.txt (single socket) or cpu_freq_log_dual_%d.txt (dual socket)
Specifying a different log file: sudo i7z --logfile filename [OR] sudo i7z -l filename
Specifying a particular socket to print: sudo i7z --socket0 X 
In order to print to a second socket use: sudo i7z --socket1 X 
To turn the ncurses GUI off use: sudo i7z --nogui
Example: To print for two sockets and also change the log file: sudo i7z --socket0 0 --socket1 1 -logfile /tmp/logfilei7z -w l

For more information on i7z, see its Google Code page.


Install i7z in Ubuntu


Ubuntu 13.10 and 14.04 users can install i7z from the official Ubuntu repositories. To install it, use the following command:
sudo apt-get install i7z

Or, to install the i7z Qt GUI, use:
sudo apt-get install i7z-gui

For older Ubuntu versions, you can try to use the Ubuntu 13.10 deb files which you can download from here: 32bit | 64bit (the debs can be found under "Built files" at the bottom). Note that I tested this in VirtualBox and the packages install successfully in older Ubuntu versions, but I don't know if i7z actually works since it doesn't work properly in VirtualBox.

Then, start i7z using the following command:
sudo i7z

Or, to run the i7z GUI (not recommended for the reasons stated above), use the following command (there's no desktop file so you won't find it in the menu / Dash):
gksu i7z_GUI

For other Linux distributions, search for i7z in the repositories or grab the source from Google Code.

Also see:
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