[wmf]

Power saving and "throttling" (usually it's un-turboing) are different cases that shouldn't be conflated; in one case the processor could run faster but in the other it can't. Ultimately we may want different metrics depending on what they're going to be used for. If you calculate relative to base frequency you will get utilization over 100% which is going to confuse some people.

Linux has done some work in this area with frequency-invariant utilization tracking: https://lwn.net/Articles/816388/

[foobar33333]

MacOS has a weird solution to throttling. They put a fake process in the process list which looks like it consuming x% of the resources but really it is just blocking some usage to allow the CPU to cool.

[bhj]

kernel_task is "real", but yeah, part of its responsibility is issuing NOOPs for thermal control: https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/main/osfmk/kern/thr...

[_ph_]

I wished they would have a separate, properly named process for it. My old MB Pro (late 2015) was throtteling a lot and it took me very long to recognize, as it was just "kernel task" gobbling up cpu. Getting the machine cleaned out at a service center did help a lot, I wonder, whether redoing the thermal paste on the cpu would have improved it further, but I ended up replacing it with a current model.

[leucineleprec0n]

I love this tbh. It's a great indicator and allows me to easily use existing tracking/functions in Activity Monitor to assay thermal headroom at particular points etc

[barrkel]

It's the right solution IMO. It doesn't artificially inflate the % of running processes but total % stays high, indicating no reserve capacity.

[pabs3]

Linux has the same solution on my machine.