[Asterisk-Users] CPU load

[Tilghman Lesher]

On Thursday 04 March 2004 11:16, PBXtech wrote:
> At what point in the CPU load does asterisk start to fail?

CPU load does not measure what you think it does.  It is simply
the measurement of the average number of processes in a short
wait status (i.e. waiting only for CPU time, not for disk access,
keyboard input, network, etc.).

How CPU load affects the processes running depends strongly
on what your processes are actually doing (e.g. the codecs used,
concurrency, echo cancellation, etc.) and the resources available
(e.g. CPU speed, CPU number, amount of memory, etc.).  There is no
simple characterization to be had of what CPU load corresponds to
poor performance of Asterisk or any other process.

In fact, you're far more likely to run into other resource constraints
before the amount of time a process spends waiting for the CPU begins
to cause performance problems.

-Tilghman