cpu

goal

monitor the cpu activity

units

each graph is in percents of cpu utilization. The vertical scale is from zero to 100 * the number of processors.

parameters

there is several parameters :

user

cpu time in user's mode

system

cpu time in kernel mode (system calls)

nice

cpu time occupied by niced process (cron, at ...)

idle

cpu time not used
the following parameters comes with linux kernel 2.6.

iowait

time waiting for I/O to complete

irq

time servicing interrupts

softirq

time servicing softirqs

more info