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While reading about htop:

"In the top right corner, htop shows the total number of processes and how many of them are running."

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If I have an 8 core machine (seen above), and I'm currently running over 100 processes, why is htop always indicating 1 process running at a time?

Shouldn't I have the potential to run more?
I'd expect that value to be... 8.
I must be misunderstanding what that value means.

What does it mean for that value to always be 1?
Am I really not running anything in parallel?

Trevor Hickey
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1 Answers1

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why is htop always indicating 1 process running at a time?

Probably because on average there is only 1 process actually running at a time.

Shouldn't I have the potential to run more?

You do have the potential to run more!

I'd expect that value to be... 8. I must be misunderstanding what that value means.

The value is actually a reflection of the amount of work available for your system to do. If there is little work to do, most of the cores will be idle most of the time.

Technically, the load average is the average number of threads in the system's run list. This includes threads / processes that are running, and those that are waiting to run. Most of the time, a thread / process on a non-busy system will be in a "wait" state; i.e. "D" which means that it is waiting for a device or file system, or "S" which means that it is waiting for user or network I/O.

Am I really not running anything in parallel?

That is correct.

If you are expecting your system, or a specific application to be running in parallel, you should probably investigate ...

Stephen C
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