Number of running processes show in top

Question

The usual maximum number that I have seen in the "running" field displayed in top(1) is the number of logical CPUs installed in the system. However, I have observed that under Ubuntu 10.04 (not checked in other versions), sometimes top(1) shows more processes running than the limit I've mentioned.

What can be causing the display of say, for example, 2 running processes in a single core system?

Answer 1

The “running” field in top doesn't show the number of tasks that are simultaneously running, it shows the number of tasks that are runnable, that is, the number of tasks that are contending for CPU access.

If top could obtain all system information in a single time slice, the “running” field would be exactly the number of tasks whose status (S column) show R (again, R here is often said to mean “running”, but this really means “runnable” as above). In practice, the number may not match because top obtains information for each task one by one and some of the runnable tasks may have fallen asleep or vice versa by the time it finishes. (Some implementations of top may just count tasks with the status R to compute the “running” field; then the number will be exact.)

Note that there is always a runnable task when top gather its information, namely top itself. If you see a single runnable task, it means no other process is contending for CPU time.

Answer 2

Hyperthreading, perhaps.

Note that top's man page says:

Tasks shown as running should be more properly thought of as 'ready to run' -- their task_struct is simply represented on the Linux run-queue. Even without a true SMP machine, you may see numerous tasks in this state depending on top's delay interval and nice value.