That's an excellent question! The "load average" numbers are one of the most important indicators of a Linux system's activity and workload.
In the top output, you'll see something like:
load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.00These three numbers represent the average number of processes that are either running or waiting to run on the CPU over different time periods.
- First number (e.g.,
0.00): The load average over the last 1 minute. - Second number (e.g.,
0.01): The load average over the last 5 minutes. - Third number (e.g.,
0.00): The load average over the last 15 minutes.
What does the number actually mean?
Think of your CPU as a single-lane bridge.
- Load Average of 1.00 on a single-core CPU: Means the bridge is exactly at capacity. If a new car (process) comes along, it might have to wait slightly.
- Load Average less than 1.00: Means the bridge has spare capacity; cars are passing through easily.
- Load Average greater than 1.00: Means there's a queue of cars waiting to cross the bridge. The higher the number, the longer the queue, and the more overloaded your system might be.
For a multi-core CPU, the interpretation changes slightly:
If you have, say, a 4-core CPU, a load average of 4.00 would mean all four cores are fully occupied. A load average of 8.00 would mean there are twice as many processes waiting to run as there are CPU cores. To get a better sense of system utilization on multi-core systems, you can divide the load average by the number of CPU cores.
In your specific output (0.00, 0.01, 0.00), the numbers are very low. This indicates that your system is currently very idle and has plenty of available processing power. There's almost no load on the CPU.
Does that explanation help clarify the load average numbers for you?
