If you spawn 20 threads on a single-CPU system, you might see a high load average, even though there are no particular processes that seem to tie up CPU time. The next cause for high load is a system that has run out of available RAM and has started to go into swap.

What is considered a high load average in Linux?

In practice, many sysadmins will draw a line at 0.70: The “Need to Look into it” Rule of Thumb: 0.70 If your load average is staying above > 0.70, it’s time to investigate before things get worse. The “Fix this now” Rule of Thumb: 1.00. If your load average stays above 1.00, find the problem and fix it now.

What is high load average?

High load average sometimes implies CPU is overloaded with too many processes. However, this can be a different case depending on how many CPU cores are installed. One single CPU core can only handle one task at a time. The more cores system has, the more tasks system can handle in parallel.