nanoant/disableturboboost.kext

Disables Turbo Boost Technology on Mac OS X for reliable OpenMP/CL benchmarking

disableturboboost.kext's Issues

Cannot compile on Yosemite

$ cc -v
Apple LLVM version 6.0 (clang-600.0.56) (based on LLVM 3.5svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin14.0.0
Thread model: posix
$ make                                                                                           2 ↵
cc  -m64  -Xlinker -kext -static DisableTurboBoost.c -o Contents/MacOS/DisableTurboBoost -fno-builtin -nostdlib -lkmod -r -mlong-branch -I/System/Library/Frameworks/Kernel.framework/Headers -Wall
clang: error: unknown argument: '-mlong-branch'
make: *** [Contents/MacOS/DisableTurboBoost] Error 1

Removing the flag -mlong-branch fixes the compiler error, but I am not sure of the consequences of such change.

Checking Status?

I have loaded the tool and after a while was having some heat and battery issue which I wasn't sure if related.

I tried SMC and PRAM reset as I didn't think the problem is related to this tool. After a while I thought I could unload the tool as well. I got an error disabling it though.

It looked like the tool was not loaded. It was not able to find its files to return.

So, now as part of my troubleshooting I'd like to know whether turboboost is disabled or not. Is there any command I can run to tell the current status?

.

If relevant, I'm using the Mid 2014 15˚ MBPr with 2.8 GHz CPU and OSX Yosemite (10.10.1).

More detailed instructions

Hi Adam,

This is a great idea. I'd like to use DisableTurboBoost.kext in a slightly different way to reduce the heat and hence fan noise in my 2011 Macbook Pro 8,2 i7 2.2 GHz.

I'm having some difficulty building DisableTurboBoost.kext. I've got Xcode 3.2.6 installed now on Snow Leopard and the DisableTurboBoost.kext downloaded.

How do I build it? (please step by step including paths). Thanks!

Making the web work for you, Alec

Look at Intel P-state driver from linux kernel

With option no_turbo it works great!
And Speed Step is working.
https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/cpufreq/intel_pstate.c

Seems to be reset after sleep / hibernation

Hello,

It seems that after a sleep of the computer (MBP), the bit is reset to a default value (which is : Turbo Boost Enabled).
As from the current implementation of the Kext, changes are only done on load and unload of the Kext. There is no monitoring of the value of the bit.

Perhaps one solution would be to catch the sleep / wake events and act accordingly, but then we don't know when the bit is reset - before, or after such event is caught.

Another option would be to monitor from time to time the bit ; and reset it to "Disabled" when we detect a change.

Enable Speed Step, but disable Turbo Boost?

Adam, was wondering if it's possible to prevent the processor from going above it's native clock, ...but still allow it to go below, (using speed step), when it's not doing heavy work.

For example. I have an i7 2760QM that's natively clocked at 2.4ghz. It will boost to around 3.6 and go down to 0.8 depending on the load. However if I run DisableTurboBoost, then Speed Step is also removed and the clock is locked to 2.4ghz.

Failed to load kext com.nanoant.DisableTurboBoost

I've tried to install this kext on my MBP late 2011 with 10.11.6 running. make was no problem, but make load gave me this output:

sudo chown -R root:wheel /tmp/DisableTurboBoost.kext
sudo kextutil -v /tmp/DisableTurboBoost.kext
Defaulting to kernel file '/System/Library/Kernels/kernel'
Diagnostics for /tmp/DisableTurboBoost.kext:
Code Signing Failure: not code signed
/tmp/DisableTurboBoost.kext appears to be loadable (not including linkage for on-disk libraries).
kext-dev-mode allowing invalid signature -67062 0xFFFFFFFFFFFEFA0A for kext "/tmp/DisableTurboBoost.kext"
kext signature failure override allowing invalid signature -67062 0xFFFFFFFFFFFEFA0A for kext "/tmp/DisableTurboBoost.kext"
Loading /tmp/DisableTurboBoost.kext.
(kernel) kxld[com.nanoant.DisableTurboBoost]: The Mach-O filetype 0x1 is not supported on the target architecture.
(kernel) Can't load kext com.nanoant.DisableTurboBoost - link failed.
(kernel) Failed to load executable for kext com.nanoant.DisableTurboBoost.
(kernel) Kext com.nanoant.DisableTurboBoost failed to load (0xdc008016).
(kernel) Failed to load kext com.nanoant.DisableTurboBoost (error 0xdc008016).
Failed to load /tmp/DisableTurboBoost.kext - (libkern/kext) link error.
Failed to load /tmp/DisableTurboBoost.kext - (libkern/kext) link error.
Check library declarations for your kext with kextlibs(8).
make: *** [load] Error 6

Unfortunately I'm not so familiar with this kind of programming, but do i have here several different problems or just one?
Thanks in advance!

warning

I have a complaint... this extension is too awesome and could if unleashed on the public could cause mass hysteria or even death by pure joy.

I'm not joking when I say for the last year I've been depressed because I've come to believe my $3000 Macbook Pro is in fact a giant turd. Where to start? overheating, noisy fans, and laggy gui when doing minimal web browsing. etc

I've gone from hacking kext's, to emailing Intel etc. Trying to Flash EFI, to countless SMC tweaks. After railing against Apple and scouring forums endlessly, I finally somehow stumbled upon your code.

After all of that my MBP overheating and being throttled all came down to one thing.... Turbo Boost on the i7.

I sincerely congratulate and thank you for this most excellent and helpful kext, Sir.
👍