I have a test application which I am monitoring using the Windows Performance Monitor. I am monitoring the % Processor Time on the w3wp Process for 20 minutes.
At the end of my run, I get a graph and a report which look like the following:
What does the average value of 391438 mean for the % Processor Time? What is its unit for measurement?
My team lead explained this to me as:
In single core processors of the past, 100% Processor time meant all of the processor time. In current days, we have PC processors with many cores and each core represents a 100 - so the above value of 391.438 (note that the , here is a decimal separator) means 391% or 100% of 3 cores and 91% of a 4th core was being utilized.