5–7 Oct 2026
Europe/Prague timezone

Thermal Framework Corner Cases: Bugs or Undefined Behavior?

6 Oct 2026, 15:00
20m
"Club A" (Prague Congress Centre)

"Club A"

Prague Congress Centre

53
Power Management and Thermal Control MC Power Management and Thermal Control MC

Speaker

Dr Daniel Lezcano (Qualcomm)

Description

The Linux thermal framework has proven to be flexible and robust over the years. However, some aspects of its event handling have become increasingly difficult to reason about, resulting in inconsistent behaviors and corner cases.

Examples include trip point updates while the temperature has already fallen within the hysteresis range after the notification was generated, inconsistent handling of thermal zones across system suspend and resume, and other situations where the expected behavior is not clearly defined or documented.

Some of these issues have been reported over the years, while others have surfaced as new users and platforms have adopted the framework. Addressing them individually without a common understanding of the expected semantics risks introducing further inconsistencies.

The goal of this discussion is to identify the current limitations of the thermal framework, establish which behaviors are considered bugs versus intentional design choices, prioritize the issues that should be addressed, and agree on a roadmap for improving the framework while preserving compatibility with existing users.

Author

Dr Daniel Lezcano (Qualcomm)

Presentation materials

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