Relationship between load average and CPU busy or CPU idle

From: js (noone_at_noone.org)
Date: 09/09/05 

Date: Fri, 09 Sep 2005 17:17:11 +1000

Hi,

Is there some kind of relationship between the load average figure and CPU
busy / idle percentage ?

What I am seeing:

On a 2-CPU SPARC box, A load average nearing 2.0 have a very low CPU idle %
( high very busy % )

On a 1-CPU SPARC box, A load average nearing 1.0 have a very low CPU idle %
( high very busy % )

Thus, what I am concluding so far is that a load average nearing N-CPUs will
have a very low CPU idle %.

Is this a fair statement ?