How do applications use anything more then 100% CPU

Question

I see all these applications using 350% CPU sometimes but how is that possible?

In: Technology

Answer 1

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.