It just happened that my laptop had many shutdowns until it completed
the rendering of a simple scene.

POV-Ray already offers Render Priority and Duty Cycles, but apparently
that was not enough. The problem is, that I am located here in the
tropical Caribbean, and because of Global Warming we're getting insanely
high temperatures in the shadow: over 43°C! The air temperature adds to
the inner temperature of the laptop. Using already "Background" for
Render Priority and "10%" for the Duty Cycles, it is still not enough.
Thus my suggestions here:

Suggestion 1
- add "5%", "3%", "2%" and "1%" to the Duty Cycles.

Suggestion 2
- add a feature that halts the render if a user-defined processor heat
level has been reached (like "80°C") and that continues when the
processor has cooled down to a user-defined temperature (like "60°C").
Allow to switch between C, K, and F to accommodate each user's preference.

Jamaica was once a tropical island, the vegetation thrived here. But
since recent years, the air is becoming increasingly hot, droughts stay
for long times, and winds blow all moisture of the soil away and we have
here now extensive wind-based soil erosion. our soil has become like
dead dust. Our rivers dry out, many small creeks are already dry and
dead. Many plants die, and the animals seem to disappear slowly.

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Am 16.09.2018 um 18:13 schrieb Sven Littkowski:
> It just happened that my laptop had many shutdowns until it completed
> the rendering of a simple scene.
> 
> POV-Ray already offers Render Priority and Duty Cycles, but apparently
> that was not enough. The problem is, that I am located here in the
> tropical Caribbean, and because of Global Warming we're getting insanely
> high temperatures in the shadow: over 43°C! The air temperature adds to
> the inner temperature of the laptop. Using already "Background" for
> Render Priority and "10%" for the Duty Cycles, it is still not enough.
> Thus my suggestions here:

Judging from both the source code and observable behaviour, I don't
think the duty cycle mechanism is even functional at the moment.

Also note that if your CPU has multiple cores, you can reduce power
consumption and thus thermal output simply by using fewer render threads
(`+wtN` option).

That said, if your computer shuts down due to overheating (as opposed to
e.g. throttling down), there's actually something severely wrong with
its thermal design - or the place you typically place it (make sure to
not cover any air slots, and don't place it in direct sunlight). While
computers may not be designed for 40°C and over, they should provide
enough margin for the CPU to enter throttling modes rather than brutally
shut down.

> - add a feature that halts the render if a user-defined processor heat
> level has been reached (like "80°C") and that continues when the
> processor has cooled down to a user-defined temperature (like "60°C").
> Allow to switch between C, K, and F to accommodate each user's preference.

That would be seriously non-portable; while modern operating systems
seem to provide /some/ standard interfaces for such stuff, not only do
they differ between operating systems, but on top of that they are
reported to not work reliably. So it would be back to reading hardware
registers - which are non-standardized and may only be accessible by
device drivers.

This stuff is so non-standardized and whacky that even specialized CPU
monitoring tools don't always get it right when a new generation of CPUs
is released.

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in news:5b9e8124$1@news.povray.org Sven Littkowski wrote:

> It just happened that my laptop had many shutdowns until it completed
> the rendering of a simple scene.

Is it at all possible to interact with POV-Ray while it is rendering, 
pause, stop, restart it (don't remember. (If not it could be a nice 
feature, POV-Ray as a service))? 
If so you could use something like psutil: 
https://psutil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ to monitor all kinds of stuff and 
pause/restart a render.

Ingo

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On 2018-09-16 12:13 PM (-4), Sven Littkowski wrote:
> POV-Ray already offers Render Priority and Duty Cycles, but apparently
> that was not enough.

Note: Render Priority does not throttle; it only prioritizes.  It does 
absolutely nothing if POV-Ray is the only program running; and based on 
the fact that you brought it up in this context, even when other 
programs are running it does far less than you probably think.

> The problem is, that I am located here in the
> tropical Caribbean, and because of Global Warming we're getting insanely
> high temperatures in the shadow: over 43°C! The air temperature adds to
> the inner temperature of the laptop. Using already "Background" for
> Render Priority and "10%" for the Duty Cycles, it is still not enough.
> Thus my suggestions here:
> [snip]

Here are some suggestions that don't involve waiting for a version of 
POV-Ray that will probably never happen:

Cheap, easy suggestions:

- Leave lots of air space around your computer; even *under* it since
   it's a laptop.

- Keep a fan blowing directly on the computer; it makes a difference.

- Have an external heat sink installed.

Expensive, possibly impractical suggestions:

- Get an air conditioner.

- Make sure you're using an Intel CPU.  Intel has better heat
   management than AMD.

- Move to a smaller island, where the trade winds are more effective.
   While temperatures have been creeping up noticeably here in the
   Virgin Islands, 43 degrees is unheard of.  Plus, if it ever becomes
   necessary, I can refer you to an entrepreneur here who does hard
   disk recovery.

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Cool tips! Thanks!

Indeed I need 2x HDD recovery, but i cannot send the HDDs to anywhere -
too high the risk of postal theft here. Can't take the risk. But we got
here some folks, too, that does that sort of thing.

The island jumping for the sake of rendering is of course a very
practical idea, and i will give it some serious consideration. Might do
that within the next 50 years. ;-)

Fan and more space below: did that, but the bad side effect is, that
much, much more dust comes into the laptop. Cleaning is expensive.

CPU is Intel already.

I think, the best is to wait for the end of the upcoming global warming,
that ie age that will follow, maybe in as less as 200 years. Then i
should be able to do some wicked renders and show you all!

:-)

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Sounds good, I will investigate and most likely give a try! Big thanks!

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