Second Generation Monitoring Solutions: Sensor Circuits for Monitoring Temperature It did help significantly with testing and burn-in periods, but beyond this, it was mostly just a data point a user might poll for a peace of mind. Unfortunately, users are not always at the console all day looking at temperature values, so this was only useful during diagnostics and testing periods when technicians knew there was a likelihood for temperature issues. If the user was not watching, the system could easily overheat and get damaged. If action was required the user would have to notice that the temperature was at a critical state and do something about it. No alarms, events, or actions could be defined, it was merely a display only technology. The first generation of CPU temperature monitoring software packages merely displayed the CPU temperature value. First Generation Monitoring Solutions: Monitoring Temperature in System Bios Overclocking and overvolting systems can have negative effects on the system’s life span, so users should be sure that they know what they are doing when they attempt them. A significant side effect of overvolting is increased heat emission. Increasing the voltage values (overvolting) allows the processor to handle its logic gates more reliably. Only the actual processor clock value can be changed on these CPUs, generally having a wider effect on system heat and stability. Modern processors are often multiplier locked, preventing a user from just changing the bus multiplier and introducing negligible additional heat to the system. Overclocking is the process of turning up the processor clock or multiplier value of a processor unit on the motherboard in order to get the highest possible clock and multiplier value without compromising system stability. Sensor controls are almost always connected to the computer’s IDE bus or SMBus infrastructures and can be accessed with the standard APIs for those buses. Developers develop software using APIs that interact with system BIOS or the various system buses on the machine. People normally use their system’s BIOS configuration menus or install monitoring software. Polling Sensor Circuits to Display Environment Data The most prominent players in the sensor market are: Nearly complete sensing product information, including documentation for APIs and other software interactions and data sheets, are available on vendor web sites. Semiconductor Companies Producing Sensor Chips Heat was increasing by leaps and bounds in newer systems that were far more complex than their predecessors. In the late 90’s, the temperature bubble burst. This was acceptable to the public at the time, since not many people felt the need to modify their PCs. Most peripherals were external, so they did not really add heat issues to the base system and those that were internal were low power and low bandwidth technologies. These PCs were not very configurable and the user could not easily modify or customize them, except for memory limits and number of floppy storage devices. When the first affordable PCs were offered to the general public in the early 80’s, system engineers and designers took into consideration the heat that system components emitted and ensured that their case and cooling designs handled the appropriate amount of heat so system damage or instability was rarely an issue. To make the most of monitoring software, users must ensure that ACPI functionality is enabled in their motherboard BIOS. Monitoring CPU and other computer components’ temperature help them run properly.
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