Is it possible to estimate the heat generated by an individual process in runtime.
Temperature readings of the processor is easily accessible but what I need is process specific information.
Is it possible to map information such as cpu utilization, io, running time, memory usage etc to get some kind of an estimate?
I'm gonna say no. Because the overall temperature of your system components isn't a simple mathematical equation with everything that's moving and switching either.
Heat generated by and inside a computer is dependent on many external factors like hardware setup, ambient temperature of the room, possibly the age of the components, is there dust on them or in the fans, was the cooling paste correctly applied on the CPU or elsewhere, where heat sinks are present, how is heat being dissipated etc.etc.. In short, again, no.
Additionally, your computer runs a LOT of processes at any given time apart from the ones that you control (and "control" is a relative term). Even if it is possible to access certain sensory data for individual components (like you can see to some extent in the BIOS) then interpolating one single process' generated temperature in regard to the total is, well, impossible.
At the lowest levels (gate networks, control signalling etc.), an external individual no longer has any means to observe or measure what's going on but there as well, things are in a changing state, a variable amount of electricity is being used and thus a variable amount of heat generated.
Pertaining to your second question: that's basically what your task manager does. There are countless examples and articles on the internet on how to get that done in a plethora of programming languages.
That is, unless some of the actually smart people in this merry little community of keytappers and screengazers say that it IS actually possible, at which point I will be thoroughly amazed...
EDIT: Monitoring the processes is a first step in what you're looking for. take a look at How to detect a process start & end using c# in windows? and be sure to follow up on duplicates like the one mentioned by Hans.
You could take a look at PowerTOP or some other tool that monitors power usage. I am not sure how accurate it is across different systems but a power estimation should provide at least some relative information as the heat generated assuming the processes you are comparing are running in similar manners on hardware. In reality there are just too many factors to predict power, much less heat, effectively but you may be able to get an idea of the usage.
