> > I don't see how those changes could affect idle, but I do suspect that there
> > is a bug in the idle loop. 

I suspect the same. The problem is very strange: When I run a program
with nice priority (19) that use 20% of the cpu time, cpu temp slow
down. I don't understand. On my laptop (transmeta crusoe), the fan is
running continuously (even with init=/bin/sh, no other prog).