What do the values 5.00, 2.00, and 1.00 in the Load Average indicator on a system signify?
sobes.tech AI
Answer from AI
Values 5.00, 2.00, and 1.00 in the Load Average indicator represent the average system load over the last 5, 2, and 1 minutes respectively.
Load Average shows the average number of processes that are either executing on the CPU or waiting in the queue to be executed (in runnable or uninterruptible sleep state).
- 5.00 — average load over the last 5 minutes
- 2.00 — average load over the last 2 minutes
- 1.00 — average load over the last minute
For example, if you have a single-core processor, a Load Average value around 1.0 means the processor is fully loaded. A value greater than 1.0 indicates that there are more processes than cores, and some processes are waiting in the queue.
For multi-core systems, the Load Average value is compared to the number of cores. For example, for a 4-core processor, a value of 4.0 indicates full utilization, and 8.0 indicates overload.
Thus, these numbers help assess how loaded the system is over different periods of time.