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Minefield @123%

Apple seems to have some problems with the calculation of the cpu load for processes which really stress the cpu. Just open up several tabs with videos on YouTube and you will see how your cpu load will raise over 100%. Out of curiosity: Does Apple already has a patent in software-overclocking?

Software-Overclocking

Update: The activity monitor sums up all the cpu usage for any thread within an existing process. Means, depending on the amount of cpu’s or cores and the amount of threads for that process, the cpu load can be higher than 100%. I hope that we don’t end-up in 8000% for a 80 core processor in the future…

10 thoughts on “Minefield @123%

  1. They count it this way for multicore processors. 100% for each core, so e.g. Core2Duo gets 200% total maximum load.

  2. Kees Grinwis says:

    Isn’t this caused by the fact that 2 CPU’s are in use now?

    100% Would mean 1 CPU is fully used and 123.4 per cent would mean that more than 1 CPU is used (each used for 61.7% on average)…

  3. Often I get Firefox pegged at 100% CPU and I know there’s a runaway thread in there. I’m thankful that most machines nowadays are multicore and I have enough horsepower to kill the process and restart.

  4. Yes it is almost certainly that it is using multiple cores. Most CPU monitoring tools behave this way in my experience and despite what people claim, Firefox does use multiple threads quite a bit.

  5. Jimmy, that’s interesting. So the optimized builds fix that problem?

    I use official nightly builds of Firefox 3.1 to run regression tests all over the day. Having my own or optimized builds can lead to wrong results.

  6. Henrik, rite now my Shiretoko (fifefox :P) is eating 9% CPU average.

    Furbism is a contributor to mozillazine.org forums where (s)he explains the build switches (s)he uses.

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