Odd message during boot sequence

[Tim Seufert]

On Nov 26, 2003, at 11:12 AM, Isaac Wingfield wrote:

> As text streams by during the boot process, I have noticed a message 
> that
> mentions a "thermal assist unit" and "jiffies".
>
> Now, I'm not at all familiar with Linux, but I've been using and 
> designing
> computers since the days of core-memory minicomputers and eight-bit 
> micros.
>
> I have never before run across either of those terms, anywhere.
>
> Could someone provide some enlightenment?

The Thermal Assist Unit is an on-die temperature sensor inside the CPU. 
  All G3s and G4s are equipped with a TAU, although on most G4s it is 
basically defective and doesn't return correct values.  The message is 
probably from a kernel driver that is initializing the TAU.

"Jiffies" usually refers to a small unit of time.  In the context of 
the Linux kernel, it's probably one scheduler quantum, which is usually 
1/100th of a second.  (But can be other values, depending on kernel 
configuration.)