This translates to approximately 50% CPU usage. Unless you haven’t upgraded your system in over a decade, your system should run on a multi-core processor.įor a dual-core processor, a load of 1 means that 1 core was 100% idle. While a load of 1 can mean approximately 100% resource usage on a single processor system, such systems are practically non-existent today. This helps a user get an idea of how the CPU is being utilized by the processes on a system over time. The third value gives us the 15-minute average load.The second gives us the average load for the last 5-minute interval.The first value depicts the average load on the CPU for the last minute.Have look at the image above where it says “load average: 0.03, 0.03, 0.01”

While most people are used to the load percentages shown in Windows systems, Load Average in Linux is depicted as three different decimal values. These values are the number of processes waiting for the CPU or using it in the given period. Load average, as the name suggests, depicts the average load on a CPU for a set time interval. Getting familiar with the Load Average in Linux This is why we use Load Average in Linux to monitor resource usage. This is because the number of processes using or waiting for the CPU time doesn’t remain constant. On its own, the load doesn’t give any useful information to the user. With each process that is being executed or is on the waitlist, the load increases by 1. It refers to the number of processes which are either currently being executed by the CPU or are waiting for execution.Īn idle system has a load of 0. In a Linux system, the load is a measure of CPU utilization at any given moment. To understand the Load Average in Linux, we need to know what do we define as load. In this tutorial, we will help you understand what Load Average in Linux means.įurther, we will discuss some easy methods to monitor the load average for your system. While Load Average is one of the most fundamental metrics of resource usage, the metric is pointless unless you understand what it tells a user. It also helps you monitor how the system resources are engaged. Load Average in Linux is a metric that is used by Linux users to keep track of system resources.

Linux cpu load