Explanations

How does it work?

Clear, detailed explanations of CPU monitoring concepts, metrics, and diagnostic techniques — so you understand what your data is telling you.

What is iowait? A simple explanation

iowait measures how much time the CPU spends waiting for disk operations. Learn what it means and when it matters.

When iowait is high and CPU follows, disk is usually the real bottleneck. Learn what to check and what to fix.

Disk bottlenecks can cause high CPU by backing up threads and creating scheduling pressure.

Memory pressure causes CPU to rise through swap activity, page faults, and GC overhead.

Active swap means RAM is exhausted. The resulting disk IO and scheduling overhead makes CPU spike.

Lock contention wastes CPU as threads spin or block waiting for shared resources.

Too many threads can waste CPU through context switching, scheduling, and contention.

When too many tasks compete for CPU cores, the scheduler itself becomes a source of overhead.

High context switching rates mean the CPU is spending time switching between tasks instead of executing them.

How to recognize when a disk bottleneck is the real cause behind high CPU readings.

What is load average. Learn the common causes, what evidence to look for, and what to fix first.

What is context switching. Learn the common causes, what evidence to look for, and what to fix first.

What is cpu steal time. Learn the common causes, what evidence to look for, and what to fix first.