Comment by VorpalWay
1 day ago
A watchdog is a piece of hardware that will automatically restart the chip if it detects the code as being stuck. The way it detects this is that you have to poke a register of the watchdog every so often, and if the register hasn't been poked for a certain timeout (usually configurable), the chip is restarted.
Watchdogs exist on MCUs but also on some "proper" computers. The Raspberry Pi has one for example.
>Watchdogs exist on MCUs but also on some "proper" computers
All modern computers have watchdog. You can check your logs
`journalctl -b | grep watchdog`
https://access.redhat.com/articles/7129255
That's a software watchdog. The comment you're replying to is talking about hardware watchdogs.
Yes, but those are done in software
There's generally at least one watchdog device available in most PCs delivered in last decade, but it's not always utilized. Essentially at one point an intel southbridge integrated a basic watchdog on all models, and it started to just... be included.
So these days you can find a variation on the TCO timer watchdog in most PCs, even if the exact implementation varies so we now have a bunch of drivers for the different variants.
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...
mac’s too?
“All CPUs” would probably be 99.9999% accurate. It’s just one of those fundamental functions you want in a processor. Whether it’s exposed in the OS is a different matter.
Cortex-A includes a watchdog so yeah.
You don't need to poke the watchdog! Petting or feeding is fine too.
lol