load average with multi-core CPU's

[Damien Fleuriot]

On 9/22/11 10:59 PM, Rodrigo Gonzalez wrote:
> On 09/22/2011 04:29 PM, Mark Felder wrote:
>> On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 10:22:43 -0500, Henry M <henry95 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Can someone explain, or point me to correct documentation on what the
>>> load
>>> average on top/uptime is actually displaying?
>>
>> Load average is "average number of processes in the run queue" for the
>> 1, 5, and 15 minute intervals. If you have a quad core CPU a 4.00 load
>> average means you've been keeping the CPU busy at 100%.
> Not exactly as I understand it....IO (disk, network or whatever) affects
> it too...
> It is the number of task waiting in queue to be run....but IO is
> important...if 2 processes are waiting for IO and it is completely
> saturated they will be kept in queue so load will get higher
> I think there are other things that affect load average but are over my
> current knowledge...
> 
> Regards
> 
> Rodrigo Gonzalez

Actually, I could be wrong but that is the number of tasks both in the
waiting *AND* the running queue.