soft_watchdog

file: /proc/sys/kernel/soft_watchdog
variable: kernel.soft_watchdog
Official reference

This parameter can be used to control the soft lockup detector.

  • 0 - disable the soft lockup detector
  • 1 - enable the soft lockup detector

The soft lockup detector monitors CPUs for threads that are hogging the CPUs without rescheduling voluntarily, and thus prevent the ‘watchdog/N’ threads from running. The mechanism depends on the CPUs ability to respond to timer interrupts which are needed for the ‘watchdog/N’ threads to be woken up by the watchdog timer function, otherwise the NMI watchdog - if enabled - can detect a hard lockup condition.

source