proc taking more than 100%

[Ken Penland_1]

In all my years I have never seen this happen and did not think it was possible. Anyone have any idea how a process can take up more than 100% of a CPU?

CPU TTY PID USERNAME PRI NI SIZE RES STATE TIME %WCPU %CPU COMMAND
0 ? 3150 httpd 152 20 23548K 15740K run 33:01 107.91 107.72 httpd
1 ? 3562 httpd 152 20 23676K 15872K run 18:45 53.79 53.69 httpd
0 ? 10527 httpd 152 20 420M 221M run 408:58 13.15 13.13 java

[Pete Randall]

It must be a multi-cpu system. In that case, it's not only possible, it happens quite often.


Pete

[Ken Penland_1]

well, the way I understood it, that first httpd process is running on CPU 0, so how could it be taking up 107% of CPU 0?

[Jeff Schussele · Accepted solution]

Hi Ken,

It only means you have a multi-CPU system AND (most importantly) an SMP-capable (aka multi-threaded) process.
Not a bad thing at face value - that's why you buy a system with > 1 CPU.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Jeff Schussele]

That's just a "snapshot".
It's obviously been on the other(s) at some point in time.

Jeff

[Ken Penland_1]

threading must be the differance...cause all of our machines have multiple CPUs in em, but this is the only time I have seen a process take up more than 100%.

Thanks all

[Ken Penland_1]

glad I wasnt going crazy and there was a reason for it! thanks all