Build Your Own Embedded System at ESC Boston: Core-Temp, CPU-Z

[Stewart_C_Intel]

At the Sept 09 Embedded Systems Conference I taught a class that highlighted some of the features in the Portwell Webs-1010 Intel Atom Processor based system. Several of the utilities that were used in the class are reviewed in this article.

Core-Temp:

A free utility that determines the Core Temperature of the processor. Its available at http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/ According to their website "the program reads from a Model Specific Register (or MSR), and detects the Tjunction temperature. A different MSR contains the temperature data, this data is represented as Delta in C° between current temperature and Tjunction.

So the actual temperature is calculated like this 'Core Temp = Tjunction - Delta'

CPU-Z

This is another free utility that displays Core Speed, Instructions Supported (eg SSE3) and a lot of other info. In the class at ESC it was used to demonstrate the BIOS settings around SpeedStep. The screenshot below shows my laptop settings, but it detects the Z510 and Z530 series of Atom Processors that we used oin the class. You can download CPU-Z from http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">

[Stewart_C_Intel]

SpeedSwitchXP

Another tool that we demonstrated at the show was SpeedSwitchXP. It's not fully supportive of all the features of the Atom Processors, but was functional enough to enable and disable speedstep, and to force the processor/OS to change modes. You can download it at http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/ http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/. YMMV (Your mileage may vary).. In particular when it was used in combo with Core-Temp or CPU-Z the readings seemed to be a bit off.

softMCCS

The final utility that you may find of interest is one that reads EDID (Extended Dsiplay Identification Data) structures from a connected display, and allows you to edit them. Its also a free download and you can get it at http://www.entechtaiwan.com/lib/softmccs.shtm http://www.entechtaiwan.com/lib/softmccs.shtm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.entechtaiwan.com/lib/softmccs.shtm

The screenshot is too big to show on this blog, but if you go to their website they have some decent pictures EnTech's website states "softMCCS is a purpose-built diagnostics and compliance application implemented on top of EnTech's next-generation, licensable http://community.edc.intel.com/t5/forums/replypage/board-id/SATD/lib/softosd.shtm http://community.edc.intel.com/t5/forums/replypage/board-id/SATD/lib/softosd.shtm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">softOSD communications library."