3
votes
2answers
536 views

How does load average work with modern CPU's?

My understanding of load average lead me to be quite shocked with my current system. The CPU in my workstation is an i7 with hyperthreading enabled, and cat /proc/cpuinfo produces 4 'cpu's. That all ...
7
votes
3answers
4k views

Why is kworker consuming so many resources on Linux 3.0.0-12-server?

Last Friday I upgraded my Ubuntu server to 11.10, which now runs with a 3.0.0-12-server kernel. Since then the overall performance has dropped dramatically. Before the upgrade the system load was ...
3
votes
2answers
760 views

Program to test CPU load and process priority

I am running some test on Amazon EC2 instances and we want to make the CPU always busy at above 80%. What I have is a program main that needs to run in high priority and I want to launch another ...
6
votes
2answers
2k views

Understanding top and load average

I'm observing a high load average an certain machine (about 9) in all three load fields. I understand load as the number of processes in state "run" / currently desiring CPU time. Am I correct at ...