Skin Temperature Control (STC)

Skin Temperature Control (STC) is a SoC Thermal Management feature that uses a Machine Learning algorithm to automatically manage system power and temperatures. STC tuning requires providing a target skin temperature and specifying an overshoot allowance.

The system continuously learns and adjusts throttling behaviors similar to DTT's Intelligent Thermal Management policy, operating independently or in coordination with system software through programmable PECI and MMIO configured via EC or BIOS.

STC provides three programmable independent temperature thresholds per domain (PECI and MMIO), configurable sensor settings, telemetry debug capabilities through PMT to read PECI data and status, and support for software-based sensors enabled through MMIO that require OS runtime updates. By default, STC utilizes PECI to receive updated sensors temperature. SW sensor overrides can be used, but the MMIO domain temperatures must be updated by SW.

As an always-available, hardware-based solution that works across different operating systems, STC operates during boot, OS installation, in UEFI shell or when thermal management drivers are absent, providing thermal backup for skin temperature management and enabling tighter interoperability in high concurrency scenarios.