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release: v1.20.0 — die temperature as an eighth load source

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@binlecode binlecode released this 27 Aug 20:02
· 76 commits to main since this release

The eighth load source, and the first one that reads how hot the machine is rather than how busy.

Added

  • An eighth load source: die temperature (--load-source temperature, or pick Temperature
    from Other Sources in the menu). Where fan speed is the lagging thermal signal — fans trail
    the work that heated the machine by seconds — this is the leading one: the die responds in
    milliseconds. Read at the same unprivileged tier as every other source (no sudo, no
    entitlement), straight off the performance-core temperature sensors via the shared SMCClient
    that shipped in 1.19.4. The menu shows the hottest sensor, the spread across all of them, and how
    many answered; the menu-bar label shows TMP 72°. Machines where no sensor answers (typically
    VMs) disable the row and fall back to CPU, exactly like fan on a fanless Mac.

    Three things about it are deliberate and worth knowing. The animation follows the hottest
    sensor, not the average — throttling responds to the hottest die, and averaging a loaded core
    cluster against an idle one hides the event worth watching. The scale is absolute (30 °C idle
    → 100 °C flat out) rather than rescaled to your machine's recent range, so a given animation speed
    means the same temperature on every Mac and on every day; the cost is that a Mac which cools well
    never quite reaches the top of the range, which is the honest reading rather than a flattering
    one. And only ~12 cluster sensors are sampled per tick rather than all 102 the chip publishes —
    they carry the same maximum, and the full sweep would have cost about 1% of a core continuously,
    which is not a thing an indicator built to not add load gets to spend.