i7's Turbo-Boost in Action

The following steps in Ubuntu Natty show turbo-boost in action on my new laptop, which is quadcore 2.0GHz, boost-able to 2.8/2.9GHz:-

sudo apt-get install acpidump
sudo modprobe msr
sudo turbostat

Turbostat shows the following stat while my laptop is not doing heavy thing:-

CPU GHz TSC
avg 0.80 2.00
0 0.80 2.00
1 0.80 2.00
2 0.80 2.00
3 0.80 2.00
4 0.81 2.00
5 0.80 2.00
6 0.80 2.00
7 0.80 2.00

Let's make the processor's cores busy, open another terminal and enter:-

while :; do :; done

Now the stat shows:-

CPU GHz TSC
avg 2.86 2.00
0 2.77 2.00
1 2.87 2.00
2 2.70 2.00
3 2.74 2.00
4 2.77 2.00
5 2.81 2.00
6 2.76 2.00
7 2.77 2.00

Cores are working hard, enjoy!