Intel Overclocking Watchdog Driver Merged For Linux 6.16

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 1 June 2025 at 02:31 PM EDT. 2 Comments

Merged today for the Linux 6.16 kernel were all of the Watchdog subsystem updates for monitoring system health and taking action such as rebooting if the system state goes bad. With the Linux 6.16 is the introduction of the Intel Overclocking Watchdog "OC WDT" driver.

Back in March I reported on a Siemens engineer publishing this OC WDT driver for Linux systems. This OC WDT driver interfaces with Intel chipsets for a built-in watchdog functionality around overclocking, seemingly if experiencing any stability issues due to overclocking. As explained then:

This new driver is for implementing an Intel OC Watchdog driver for the support found in modern Intel PCH chipsets. Yes, the "OC" is for over-clocking and the patch is coming from a Siemens engineer complete with a "Siemens SA" copyright on the new open-source driver code.

This Intel OC Watchdog driver for Linux is a simple watchdog driver and matches to the Intel INT3F0D and INTC1099 device IDs. These IDs match to the Intel Watchdog Timer "WDT" Driver on Microsoft Windows. The overclocking aspect isn't entirely clear short of the watchdog intended to catch a faulty/unstable overclock but again somewhat amusing in that case it coming from Siemens. This Intel PCH watchdog may very well be useful outside the confines of strictly overclocking stability.

The driver was submitted as part of the Watchdog pull request for the Linux 6.16 merge window and is now merged for this next kernel version.

👁 Intel Core Ultra CPU kit

This Intel Watchdog driver for Linux is little more than 200 lines of C code.