Re: Relationship between load average and CPU busy or CPU idle

From: Casper H.S. Dik (Casper.Dik_at_Sun.COM)
Date: 09/09/05 

Date: 09 Sep 2005 08:59:04 GMT

js <noone@noone.org> writes:

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

Some.

>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 ?

The "load average" is the number of runnable jobs; so it would stand to
reason that if the load average is >= # of CPUs that your CPUs will then
be busy.

Casper 

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