Intel CPU Temperature Monitoring Driver For Linux Now Unmaintained After Layoffs
Posted by Learning_Loon@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 87 comments
There is yet more apparent fallout from Intel's recent
layoffs/restructurings as it impacts the Linux kernel... The coretemp
driver that provides CPU core temperature monitoring support for all
Intel processors going back many years is now set to an orphaned state
with the former driver maintainer no longer at Intel and no one
immediately available to serve as its new maintainer.
A_Talking_iPod@reddit
If Intel stopped supporting Linux that would actually be catastrophic for their server/enterprise business and would signal that the company is in much, much worse state than we thought
Laughing_Orange@reddit
"We are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies." - Lip-Bu Tan, Intel CEO, 2025
When the man who has the most to gain from Intel being perceived as one of the biggest semiconductor companies says this, you know things are bad. I hope for the sake of the industry that he can turn Intel around, getting back up to at least objectively in the top 10 semiconductor companies.
JacqueMorrison@reddit
AMD was in a far worse state and made it. There is a chance, but no guarantee to it. Many future leaders could have been amongst the 10k's that were let go.
SamSausages@reddit
And was in rough shape, but they didn’t lose trust. Intel has lost a lot of good faith by taking shortcuts to try and have top cpu performance, only to then have the product nerfed by microcode updates and security nightmares. Really should be sued for false advertisement
Martin8412@reddit
Intel spent all the time without competition from AMD putting out new CPUs with 10% improvements over the previous generation, just because they could. They deliberately sandbagged CPU performance for no good reason but to make more money.
That plus all of their shady deals with OEMs to keep AMD out.
They deserve it.
Admirable-Safety1213@reddit
And then what? AMD becomes the new Intel and the story repeats but now without a fallback and x86 is now in the hands of only one manufacturer
midorikuma42@reddit
We need to get away from x86 anyway; it's a creaky old architecture. The future is with ARM and RISC-V, so in the future we'll be using CPUs with those ISAs. Maybe AMD will be able to pivot and be one of the dominant vendors here, but it doesn't look like Intel will survive the transition. Oh well.
Admirable-Safety1213@reddit
The problem is that until development abd gaming software makers ships good ARM or RISC-V binaries it wouldn't matter if they make the best CPUs because nobody would have anything to run in them
midorikuma42@reddit
For servers, no one cares about gaming software, and development isn't done with commercial compilers these days.
squirrel8296@reddit
The difference is x86 was the architecture when intel did its shady deeds. ARM is the most important architecture nowadays and RISC-V will come on the scene as well soon enough. x86 is in decline and eventually it won’t have the market share to support 2 large vendors whose business is entirely based on it. It’s why AMD is also getting back into the ARM game.
Admirable-Safety1213@reddit
Everybody says it but many software makers keot making only x86 binaries and without ARM games there will never be an ARM desktop
SamSausages@reddit
It sucks, but we can't protect these corporations from consequences, or the story will also repeat itself.
broknbottle@reddit
They should have been sued for the scam they pulled with 10nm by shipping a small number of i3 NUCs with defective iGPUs and AMD Vega Graphics, so they could claim they shipped 10nm desktop chips.
Roth_Skyfire@reddit
Difference is that AMD was small and continued to steadily grow while Intel was once big and is now massively shrinking. It has to focus its efforts on restructuring rather than doing what they'd normally be doing.
elsjpq@reddit
AMD was smaller and easier to pivot. Intel just spent billions on fabs that they're still not getting a good return on
first-trina@reddit
Plus, the far left didn't fight against AMD like they are now with Intel. A lot of people don't want a fab in a sensitive Mississippi river valley.
sjphilsphan@reddit
The fuck are you going on about.
Correctthecorrectors@reddit
But AMD never laid off the devs who maintained their drivers….
td_mike@reddit
AMD had to sell their fabs, that would hurt Intel quite a lot.
dlm2137@reddit
How many semiconductor companies are there even? 10 is higher than I would have guessed.
teleprint-me@reddit
https://companiesmarketcap.com/semiconductors/largest-semiconductor-companies-by-market-cap/
The two most well known are ASML and TMSC.
Intel was in the lead for awhile for CPUs, but not anymore.
hobo_stew@reddit
how many are there that actually directly design or produce modern processors in some way?
that seems like the relevant question to me.
I can list of the top of my head without particular order:
AMD
Apple
TSMC
Intel
Samsung
Qualcom
NVIDIA
ARM
squirrel8296@reddit
Mediatek, Texas Instruments, Via Technologies, IBM, NXP, Global Foundries (includes MIPS), Western Design, and Motorola would also go on that list
Gabelvampir@reddit
The top 10, per above link, also includes Broadcom, Texas Instruments and Applied Materials (not sure who the last ones are), and Apple is apparently not on it for some reason.
Admirable-Safety1213@reddit
Foundries?
elmagio@reddit
He's not trying to turn Intel around, he's trimming down the fat until it's slim enough for buyers to buy it piecemeal. And I'm not blaming him, it's what the board brought him in for.
Intel as a leading chipmaker is done and it's just a matter of who will own which parts of it when the dust settles.
colbyshores@reddit
Intel should go the ARM route by offering patent and design licenses, in exchange for using their foundries. That would get Nvidia on board with using their foundries in exchange for access to their SSE parents.
That solves an issue for Nvidia and for Intel. The cutting edge isn't necessary when these Nvidia APUs would be going in to laptops
TPIRocks@reddit
Nvidia wanted an instruction set license from Intel, Intel refused. An Nvidia GPU can emulate an Intel processor, and beat Intel on benchmarks. Intel is at a dead end now, with nothing new to offer. ARM will rule, unless riscv steals the show.
cyber-punky@reddit
Just to confirm what you have written, an NVIDIA gpu can emulate an intel processor,
Are you saying they use the Intel ISA ? , because this is the first time that I have heard of this. Do you have any sources on this ?
TPIRocks@reddit
I'm saying that Nvidia asked for a license to the USA, and Intel refused. It's a little more complicated than that, as Nvidia was licensed to produce the "chipset" for boards. Then Intel created a new chipset arch and claimed Nvidia didn't have a license to implement that. Nvidia sued, Intel lost and paid a bunch of money, but still refused to allow Nvidia to have an isa license.
cyber-punky@reddit
Legal jiggery-pokery aside,
> An Nvidia GPU can emulate an Intel processor, and beat Intel on benchmarks.
They don't emulate an intel processor.
TPIRocks@reddit
sigh
squirrel8296@reddit
Why? ARM is the more modern, efficient, and customizable choice. X86 basically only exists because of backwards compatibility at this point.
mdk3418@reddit
Aren’t the foundries Intel current biggest issue?
Ryebread095@reddit
The issue is that foundries aren't a quick way to make money, it is a long term investment. Intel's board got scared that the foundries weren't a quick return on investment, and so now they're imploding.
n5xjg@reddit
Gee, I guess another reason to stop using Intel cpus 🤣
AMD is kicking ass in the data center also anyway so no big deal. Intel is dead. Good riddance to old crappy hardware.
mishrashutosh@reddit
lack of competition is never good. if amd is the only enthusiast option left standing, prepare to pay exorbitant prices for their products (already happening with amd cpus and nvidia gpus). i have hope that intel will overcome this as they are still bigger than amd in terms of assets, revenue, and profit.
squirrel8296@reddit
There is tremendous competition in the industry right now, especially from all of the companies using ARM-based architectures. That’s what did Intel in, not AMD.
mishrashutosh@reddit
that's true, but there is no competition in the enthusiast market. consumer arm chips are not standardized and are mostly useless for custom rigs.
squirrel8296@reddit
Custom rigs make up such a small part of the overall market at this point that they're not a factor in the overall market.
mishrashutosh@reddit
Not sure why you keep hammering this when I don't disagree with any of your points. I was saying that Intel's downfall is bad for enthusiasts due to lack of competition for AMD. I know that Intel's problems go way beyond AMD.
UffTaTa123@reddit
well, i knew for sure which company wanted exorbitant prices from it's customer. And it's name did not started with a "A".
Javelina_Jolie@reddit
AMD didn't want exorbitant prices in the past because they were competing against Intel and would be digging themselves a grave by pricing their products too high. If Intel is gone, that incentive is gone as well. Monopolies are always terrible for consumers.
squirrel8296@reddit
AMD would be competitive against ARM chip makers. ARM is always cheaper to develop and produce than x86.
mishrashutosh@reddit
I totally get it, but I hope Intel learns from their mistakes and starts making consumer friendly decisions. AMD was in a dire situation after being ass for a decade but they corrected course and got back on track.
Correctthecorrectors@reddit
Apple?
Correctthecorrectors@reddit
Nvidia and Qualcomm could end up replacing intel at this rate
sensitiveCube@reddit
But NV may be even worse than Oracle.
Epsilon_void@reddit
This was always going to happen. Unimportant stuff like "temperature drivers" and their maintainers is simply not needed in this day and age. The only thing that matters is the CEO, The Board, and a team of lawyers. Those people are the true money makers, not these lousy developers, we can get AI to replace them anyways.
Zomunieo@reddit
From an executive perspective, a temperature driver gives the customer confidence that their hardware is properly cooled. If the customer isn’t able to monitor this, they might burn out more CPUs and purchase more Intel.
debian_fanatic@reddit
I think u/Epsilon_void was being sarcastic, but I definitely would agree. I would NEVER purchase a CPU that doesn't have proper temp reporting for Linux.
Sangaricus@reddit
I cannot believe that Intel is losing
SureElk6@reddit
They took the eye off the ball. AMD kicked their butt first and then apple moved to their own chips.
squirrel8296@reddit
Not even just AMD. Apple and Qualcomm as well.
Ryebread095@reddit
I can believe they're losing, but I can't believe how bad they are at handling it. It's like they're just giving up instead of trying to innovate and make products worth buying.
Sangaricus@reddit
Yes, exactly. It sounds weird for such a big company to stop innovating.
aqjo@reddit
Making America Great Again
Ezmiller_2@reddit
Not a political issue.
aqjo@reddit
Their stock, which dropped 3% on Friday due to politics, would disagree.
Ezmiller_2@reddit
What politics? BTW, Intel has foundries in Israel. So keep that in mind.
jferments@reddit
Welp, glad I'm running AMD 🧊👍😎👍🧊
abotelho-cbn@reddit
This is why layoffs like this are never good. Poor support for Linux from Intel will only make them snowball.
piexil@reddit
If there's one thing Intel's had its excellent Linux support, even compared to amd
Sad to see this
dafugg@reddit
Their video drivers have been the easiest to use under Linux for decades. I’ll be really disappointed if they stop supporting them.
abotelho-cbn@reddit
Agreed. It was a relatively solid anchor.
FlailingDino@reddit
Are we sure he was laid off? The article doesn’t concretely specify that he was. In any case layoffs suck and are scary so he might have wanted to jump ship.
tadfisher@reddit
This is an Intel employee checking which maintainer emails still work after the layoffs. This one doesn't, so you do the math.
FlailingDino@reddit
But it’s still possible he could have left on his own accord. Just because there are layoffs happening doesn’t mean people stop leaving for other jobs.
redsox44344@reddit
He works for NVIDIA starting in Jan 2025 if you search his linkedin. Doesn't seem like it was a layoff.
sensitiveCube@reddit
AI can do this, that's what the CEO told us. /s
notam00se@reddit
There was a lot of work announced for the Intel Pro drivers with the B50/B60 GPU that I am assuming will be pushed back months. SR-IOV, multi-gpu pooling, VDI, etc.
Some of that is required for the BattleMatrix project which I doubt they will let wither, but not a lot of hope.
Obnomus@reddit
Damn losing job in this economy is very bad.
first-trina@reddit
Huh? There's demand for good engineers. Just not in Ohio where the far leftists are successfully blocking Intel from building their foundry and thus putting Intel in financial jeopardy. This is what they wanted.
PuzzleCat365@reddit
Those people don't have my problems finding a new job. He's at NVIDIA now.
sensitiveCube@reddit
A layoff can still hurt you mentally. And you'll maybe have to move to a completely different state or country.
redsox44344@reddit
This guy probably wasn't even laid off.
AtlanticPortal@reddit
Those people have so much money at hand that they would actually enjoy a couple of months vacation. And they already have a queue of companies fighting for them.
Correctthecorrectors@reddit
I agree , however intel is a sinking ship so the fact he got employed with nvidia is probably a big relief for him.
sensitiveCube@reddit
I really hope it is, as I don't understand the massive layoffs in the world.
DesiOtaku@reddit
Of course....
billyalt@reddit
This alone makes it a huge net negative for Intel what were they thinking lol
Correctthecorrectors@reddit
yeah that’s catastrophic for nvidia. Especially because nvidia is looking to enter the CPU/APU market and they’ve been having a challenging time maintaining Linux drivers. is Intel about to go under?
emfloured@reddit
ldd $(which turbostat)shows:linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007f74ded6b000)libcap.so.2 => /lib64/libcap.so.2 (0x00007f74ded0d000)libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007f74deb1c000)/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f74ded6d000)It does not show 'Coretemp' as one of its dependencies that Mr. Yu used to maintained. It seems the
turbostatis independent of Coretemp, I don't see any problem how that would negatively affect us. Unless of course the developer(s)/maintainer(s) ofturbostatthemselves implicitly depended on the code written by Mr. Yu and if Intel decides to change the register addresses to probe the temperature reading but then again they are one of the biggest contributors to the Kernel and they will indeed update it anyhow.Let the man go.
NotUniqueOrSpecial@reddit
You don't say! Oh, wait...
You can't have a user-space dependency on a kernel module.
turbostatreads strings fromdevfs. It's not going to have a user-space shared-library dependency oncoretemp. The dependencies you can observe are traceable by looking at which preprocessor definitions the two implementation share.Maybe learn how this stuff works first, then?
emfloured@reddit
I wasn't expecting 'Coretemp' to show up on the ldd list at all since I am aware of the fact that the Coretemp is neither a standalone executable program nor is it a standalone shared library, that I had already checked by using a simple search. But I don't blame you and the negative votes for the confusion. The way I wrote that comment does suck. I should have clarified more on that.
What I was looking for is some common library implicitly related to both the kernel module that uses that 'Coretemp' file and the 'turbostat' utility which I didn't find. Granted it's not a very good way to know with maximum correctness but it does some info as to how something is/could be different.
Okay now I thorougly used an LLM to look more into this and found out that turbostat indeed is a program which is independent of coretemp.ko kernel module.
sdns575@reddit
This is why when I run sensors on termrinal I get weird output for 285k like wrong core enumerarion?
Hope that temps will be real
Fresh-Toilet-Soup@reddit
Guess I won't be buying Intel any time soon.