NVIDIA Tegra SoC thermal sensors (SOCTHERM and BPMP)
On-chip temperature sensors and thermal-throttling hardware built into NVIDIA's Tegra system-on-chip family, used in Jetson developer boards and Jetson Orin production modules as well as older Tegra30-era devices. The code covers both the older direct-access SOCTHERM block and the newer path that asks the on-chip BPMP firmware to report temperatures and apply cooling policies.
recommendation
It should stay because NVIDIA still ships Tegra-based Jetson Orin modules in 2025 and the kernel code is being actively maintained, with upstream patches touching both the SOCTHERM and BPMP thermal files as recently as 2023 and 2026. There is no replacement driver for this hardware, and Jetson Linux documentation continues to rely on this subsystem for thermal management.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Recent upstream maintenance touched drivers/thermal/tegra/soctherm.c in April 2026, indicating the driver is still actively serviced.
- lore.kernel.org
drivers/thermal/tegra/tegra-bpmp-thermal.c also saw upstream API-conversion work, showing continued attention to newer Tegra BPMP thermal support.
- nvidia.com
NVIDIA still markets Jetson Orin production modules, so Tegra-based embedded hardware remained on sale in 2025 and beyond.
- docs.nvidia.com
Current Jetson Linux documentation describes thermal management in Linux and BPMP for Jetson Orin platforms, matching the subsystem covered by this driver directory.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory, not an early-exit case. Local code inspection via exec_command showed Kconfig entries for TEGRA_SOCTHERM, TEGRA_BPMP_THERMAL, and TEGRA30_TSENSOR under NVIDIA Tegra thermal drivers. lore_file_timeline on the directory path returned no matches, so I fell back to lore_activity on drivers/thermal/tegra/soctherm.c and drivers/thermal/tegra/tegra-bpmp-thermal.c; those returned recent 2026 and 2023 maintenance/API-conversion patches with lore URLs above. Web search on nvidia.com/docs.nvidia.com found the Jetson Orin product page and Jetson Linux Developer Guide page showing current Tegra/Jetson deployments and BPMP/Linux thermal management. No evidence of an active removal series was found in the sampled lore results, and there is no natural replacement driver for the same hardware; recommendation is keep.