Subject: Re: Nice processes on Unix
From: rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock)
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2008 21:29:03 -0500
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <rZednX9ftK_yCNHVnZ2dnUVZ_gKdnZ2d@speakeasy.net>
Raymond Wiker  <raw@RawMBP.local> wrote:
+---------------
| Tim Bradshaw <tfb+google@tfeb.org> writes:
| > As others have said, this really isn't right.  Firstly average is
| > computed over the number of cores (or virtual CPUs in some sense),
| > and secondly the load is not just dependent on CPU utilisation but
| > also on I/O.  It is quite common to see machines with very high load
| > with almost no CPU utilisation, as they are starving for I/O.
| 
| 	I think the definition of the load average is the number of
| runnable process in the run queue - i.e, processes that are not
| currently waiting for I/O or sleeping. Thus, I/O bound processes
| should not count, but I could be wrong about this.
+---------------

Sorry, you *are* wrong about this... for Linux.
(But only Linux. Most other O/Ss get it right.)


-Rob

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Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
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