The load average is the average system load on a Linux server for a defined period of time. In other words, it is the CPU demand of a server that includes sum of the running and the waiting threads. … These numbers are the averages of the system load over a period of one, five, and 15 minutes.

How is CPU load average calculated in Linux?

On Linux, load averages are (or try to be) “system load averages”, for the system as a whole, measuring the number of threads that are working and waiting to work (CPU, disk, uninterruptible locks). Put differently, it measures the number of threads that aren’t completely idle.

What does CPU load average mean?

CPU load is the number of processes which are being executed by CPU or waiting to be executed by CPU. So CPU load average is the average number of processes being or waiting executed over past 1, 5 and 15 minutes.