I know that load average is 0-1(or 0-1024) per cpu. E.g a busy quad-core can have a load average of 4.0 or higher. (e.g if there are many tasks). I understand it can be huge like 100+ etc.
I also understand it's not cpu utilization (i.e it can go beyond 100%), but it does reflect what the cpu is capable of.
But why is it not automatically divided by the number of CPU's in the system?
This is more of a historical question. Why is:
(load)
and not :
(load) / (# of cores)
with all cpu's taken into account? Why is it per-cpu? Having it per-cpu means I first have to find out how many cpu's the system have, then divide that number to get a meaningful number. This is cumbersome when managing many different systems.
This is for Linux.