Question: Background: I have a whole mess of systems running the 2.6.20 and 2.6.22 kernel in what started as a Fedora Core 2 install several years ago. These systems have 8 cpus, as reported by `cat /proc/cpuinfo`.

My question is, when a process is running that uses multi-threading, does 99.99% CPU usage as reported by `top` mean 99.99% of every CPU or 99.99% total if you add the usage on each CPU together? In other words, should the maximum percentage be 800% or 100%?

It seems that when one of these processes is at 99.99%, if you look at each cpu individually, they will say 25% utilization (instead of 100%).

Any help is appreciated. If I was unclear or confusing, let me know and I will try to clarify.

**UPDATE**
It seems as though we may have been seeing the low utilization because of a problem with the threading model used by the programmers. They're using user threads as opposed to kernel threads and are seeing limitations in what user threads are allowed to do.

Answer: 
99% cpu usage means almost total utilization of single core.

if your system is totally loaded [ couple threads each hogging one cpu ] - you'll see 400% usage on quad core or 800% usage on two quad cores.

processes/threads are re-assigned between cpus - that's why you see 25% of utilisation on each of cores. but you can [set affinity](http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/setting-processor-affinity-certain-task-or-process.html) for them.. then they'll stick to selected processors/cores.
It shows load per core. Don't forget about a great "top" replacement called htop. It will draw you load of individual cpus/cores.