Record High Load Average

[Chris Maltby]

terryl at tekcrl.LABS.TEK.COM writes:
<      OK, it's reminiscing time again. WAY BACK (that's way back, Sherman!!!),
< in medevial times, back when Berkeley's EECS Cory machine was a lowly 11/70,
< the load average was regularly in the low 50's!!!

Memories, memories. 60 users on an 11/70 with 640kb of core. Times were
tough then...

<      I wonder how a load average of 50 on an 11/70 compares with a load
< average of 128 on an 11/780.......

Load averages seem to be pretty much an absolute, regardless of the hardware.
Anyway, an 11/70 was faster than a 780. Who would bother with a machine like
that. So here's the plug: the nice thing about machines like our Sequent
is that you get to divide the load average by the number of processors. To
get a load average of 128 you'd need 700 processes on the run queue (6 CPUs).
Given that we only have table space for 245 processes, we can never see
a load average greater than 40. Ho Hum.
-- 
Chris Maltby - Softway Pty Ltd	(chris at softway.sw.oz)

PHONE:	+61-2-698-2322		UUCP:		uunet!softway.sw.oz.au!chris
FAX:	+61-2-699-9174		INTERNET:	chris at softway.sw.oz.au