I see all these applications using 350% CPU sometimes but how is that possible?
In: Technology
100% means 100% of a single core. If you have a quad-core processor, the maximum possible is 400%.
Think of a CPU as a single worker in an office.
Originally most computers just had that one worker but these days modern computers are have more workers in cubicles (like modern offices). Each worker can work independently, but if a program knows how to break itself into multiple bits, it can get multiple workers to work on it at the same time.
When you see 350% CPU think of it as meaning 3 and half workers are all spending their time running this programme.
That’s just how some monitors report machines with multiple CPU cores. If you have 4 cores and each is at 87.5%, that’s a total of 350%.
I believe this is how macOS reports its CPU usage in comparison to windows which just sums up all the CPU cores and total out of 100% it has to do with number of cores and each cores individual utilization summed up to a total usage. The applications themselves don’t use more than 100% CPU, but they can utilize more than one core making it appear like there is further utilization.
Depends on how your monitoring program calculates having multiple CPU cores, you can fully use one core and have minor tasks of the app running on a separate core, the app is then using more than 100% of a cpu core.
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