mpstat reports processor statistics in tabular form. Each row of the table represents the activity of one processor. The first table summarizes all activity since boot; each subsequent table summarizes activity for the preceding interval. All values are rates (events per second) unless otherwise noted.

During execution of this kernel status command, the "state" of the kernel can change. An example would be CPUs going online or offline. mpstat reports this as State change.

mpstat reports the following information:

CPU or SET

Without the -a option, mpstat reports CPU, the processor ID. With the -a option, mpstat reports SET, the processor set ID.

minf

minor faults

mjf

major faults

xcal

inter-processor cross-calls

intr

interrupts

ithr

interrupts as threads (not counting clock interrupt)

csw

context switches

icsw

involuntary context switches

migr

thread migrations (to another processor)

smtx

spins on mutexes (lock not acquired on first try)

srw

spins on readers/writer locks (lock not acquired on first try)

syscl

system calls

usr

percent user time

sys

percent system time

wt

percent wait time

idl

percent idle time

With the -a option, mpstat also reports:

sze

number of processors in the set

With the -p option, mpstat also reports:

set

processor set membership of the CPU

The following options are supported:

-a

Aggregate output by processor set. Sort the output by set. The default output is sorted by CPU number.

-p

Report processor set membership of each CPU. Sort the output by set. The default output is sorted by CPU number.

-P set

Display only those processors in the specified set.

interval

Report once each interval seconds.

count

Only print count reports.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

sar(1), iostat(1M), sar(1M), vmstat(1M), attributes(5)

The sum of CPU utilization might vary slightly from 100 because of rounding errors in the production of a percentage figure.