OpenAI's Coding Agent Helped Create A New AMD Temperature Driver For Linux
([AMD] 6 Hours Ago
prom21-xhci)
- Reference: 0001632721
- News link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Prom21-xHCI-Temp-Driver
- Source link:
The newest open-source AMD Linux driver on the Linux kernel mailing list that has recently been undergoing review is prom21-xhci that exposes the temperature sensors found on the AMD Promontory 21 chipsets' xHCI controllers.
The Promontory 21 architecture is used by AMD's 600 and 800 series AM5 chipsets. While there is the CPU temperature monitoring available with all recent AMD processors, desktop motherboard sensor monitoring varies by particular motherboard,, and other Linux temperature sensor options for AMD systems, the newest option is for the temperature sensor on the chipset's xHCI controllers. While many may not particularly care about the xHCI controller temperature, it can be used as a temperature sensor close to the chipset temperature itself.
This new prom21-xhci driver can be flipped on with the SENSORS_PROM21_XHCI Kconfig option. This driver will expose the Promontory 21 xHCI temperature sensor(s) via the Linux hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem so it works with existing Linux user-space tools.
This driver isn't coming from AMD directly but rather an open-source developer Jihong Min. The patches note that the driver was created in part by Codex GPT-5.5, OpenAI's coding agent.
Those interested in this AMD Promontory 21 xHCI temperature sensor driver can find the work currently under review on the [1]kernel mailing list .
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260508143910.14673-1-hurryman2212@gmail.com/
The Promontory 21 architecture is used by AMD's 600 and 800 series AM5 chipsets. While there is the CPU temperature monitoring available with all recent AMD processors, desktop motherboard sensor monitoring varies by particular motherboard,, and other Linux temperature sensor options for AMD systems, the newest option is for the temperature sensor on the chipset's xHCI controllers. While many may not particularly care about the xHCI controller temperature, it can be used as a temperature sensor close to the chipset temperature itself.
This new prom21-xhci driver can be flipped on with the SENSORS_PROM21_XHCI Kconfig option. This driver will expose the Promontory 21 xHCI temperature sensor(s) via the Linux hardware monitoring (HWMON) subsystem so it works with existing Linux user-space tools.
This driver isn't coming from AMD directly but rather an open-source developer Jihong Min. The patches note that the driver was created in part by Codex GPT-5.5, OpenAI's coding agent.
Those interested in this AMD Promontory 21 xHCI temperature sensor driver can find the work currently under review on the [1]kernel mailing list .
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260508143910.14673-1-hurryman2212@gmail.com/