If this is a single-threaded CPU, that means the computer is overloaded. So, during the last minute on this machine, there were an average of 1.68 programs either using CPU processing time or waiting for CPU processing time. Like we mentioned before, this is a measure of how many programs were using CPU time during the last minute. This is the value of CPU load during the last minute. There are three values here, and we’ll look at them in sequence. Thankfully, this is actually pretty easy to decipher. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, this looks like noise. If you run a command like uptime or top, you might see a CPU load value that looks like 1.68 0.55 5.91. Running a program that displays Linux CPU load totals can be a bit confusing at first. If you have 2 processors, each with one logical core, that’s the same to Linux as having 1 processor with 2 logical cores. It’s worth mentioning that Linux makes no distinction between multi-core and multi-processor system. Instead, your CPU load would be considered full for your CPU if your load value was 4, not 1. Instead, it would only be one-quarter loaded. If your CPU has four cores, then a CPU load of 1 isn’t a fully loaded CPU. Most CPUs these days constitute more than just one CPU core, running more than just one CPU thread. Instead, what constitutes “full” CPU load is dependent on how many operating system threads your CPU boasts. However, what’s unintuitive about CPU load is that a value of 1 isn’t necessarily a fully loaded measurement. In our previous example, we would have one-minute load times of. A completely idle processor would have a load value of 0. Instead of measuring the percentage of time that the CPU is working, CPU load measures how many programs are using or waiting for a processor core at one time. You could downgrade your processor to a lower tier, save money, and see no reduction in the quality of your server’s performance.

Most servers are sold by overall computing power, and if your server is only sitting at 30% CPU usage, you’re paying for too much processor power. Most companies seek to keep the CPU usage of their servers as close to 100% as possible. Instead, if the program only required six seconds processing time on one core, the usage would be 10%. For instance, if you had a program that required uninterrupted processing power for 54 out of the last 60 seconds, your CPU usage on one core would be 90%. CPU usage is a measurement, in a percentage, of how much time the CPU spends actively computing something.

Even though they might sound similar, they’re quite different. The first thing to understand is that CPU load is not the same thing as CPU usage.

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