Hi,

I've been following this thread, in the hope of some kind of definite 
answer to what these numbers are precisely (being mostly ignorant to 
*NIX stuff myself). So far there still seem to be no authoritative 
explanation forthcomming?


> Try not to think of it as a percent of processor in use. Think of it  like
> this. Anything more than 0.0 means that processes are asking for time faster
> than your system can finish their requested tasks.

While this sounds right to me overall, are you sure it shouldn't have 
been "Anything more than [1.0] means[...]"? Otherwise, what number 
would be shown in a case where the CPU idles, or are at 50% load? (ie. 
"[...]processes are asking for time [slower] than the system can[...] 
in you terminology.)

= = =

What I know for sure is this: The number will never go below 0.0, 
which corrosponds to the CPU being idle 100% of the time (duh! Who 
would have guessed!) Also, I'm quite (but not absolutely) sure that it 
(theoretically) has no upper limit (ie. it would go towards inifnity 
if you were running XP and Word on, say a ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64).

I do have some further, albeit unsure, information about how the 
number works, but don't put too much trust in this:

I seem to remember being told that a load of 1.0 means that your CPU 
is working fulltime, but no active threads have to wait for their 
timeslices. A lower number means free CPU time is left over, and a 
higher number indicates that the active threads have to wait.

Assuming this is correct (although it might very well not be!) it 
might be considered kind of like a percentage (ie. 1.0 = 100%, 0.5 = 
50% and so on), but where more than 100% is possible, such that a load 
of 2.0 would indicate that the active threads are waiting about the 
same ammount of time that they get to execute (ie. 2.0 = 200% = the 
work could be done without waiting by two CPU's, or one twice as fast 
as the current one, and so forth.)

This, however, seem a bit converse to what people have been writing 
here, that the number has to do with the number of threads waiting (or 
something along those lines). I must therefore reiterate that my 
information may very well be completely wrong?

It would make sense using this method though, since the usual (for MS 
OS'es at least) solution, of showing the "actual" CPU load (0-100%, 
but never more than 100%), leaves out that crucial bit of information 
information about how much "overload" is present (ie. how much more 
CPU load would I need to buy to avoid the slowdown).

There is quite a difference between a situation where the threads are 
waiting 10% of the time they spend executing, and one where they are 
waiting 290% of their running time. In both cases a MS OS would show a 
CPU load of 100%, whereas on a *NIX box, these loads (assuming my info 
is correct) would translate to 1.10 respectivly 2.90, indicating that 
the former situation is somewhat ok, whereas the latter tells you to 
go shop for either a two new CPUs like the one you currently have or 
get a new one that is three times faster, in either case, and all 
things else being equal, you would get a CPU load a little below 100%, 
or in *NIX speech, it would show just below 1.0 (for each CPU, in case 
of the multi-CPU solution.)

= = =

Anyone care to comment on the above? Perhaps you know this is 
certainly wrong, or that it might be correct? I sure hope that 
eventually someone will learn the actual truth of how these, so far 
magic, numbers are calculated, and make sure to post a note about it here!

Also, if anyone knows of a utility for Win32 OS'es (specifically 
Win2k) that will show the load in a similar (*NIX) manner, I'd very 
much like some linkage!


Adam.