Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!sequent!jjb
From: jjb@sequent.UUCP (Jeff Berkowitz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sequent
Subject: load average
Summary: how to define it?
Message-ID: <15248@sequent.UUCP>
Date: 27 Apr 89 23:17:56 GMT
References: <2470@helios.ee.lbl.gov> <67727@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Reply-To: jjb@sequent.UUCP (Jeff Berkowitz)
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc
Lines: 26
Keywords:

In article <67727@pyramid.pyramid.com>,
  csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst) writes:
>
>There's a reason for that. Dynix divides the load average by the number of
>CPUs you have. If uptime(1) displays 1.6, and you have four CPUs, then the
>load average is really 6.4.
>

"really"? :-)

Very early in the history of DYNIX, Sequent experimented with both
alternative implementations of load average.  The existing one was
selected because it more accurately described the behavior that
users perceived.

In addition, some daemons refuse to run if the "load average"
is very high.  Since customers can also write code that checks
this, the computed load average should reflect reality; each
processor can simultaneously run a program.

How does a four processor 9845 handle load average?  I presume
from your comment that Pyramid does not divide by the number of
processors?  Does this mean performance does not scale linearly?
-- 
Jeff Berkowitz N6QOM			uunet!sequent!jjb
Sequent Computer Systems		Custom Systems Group