Option to show System Idle thread?

[Nerva]

Maybe this is already in PR and I just haven't found it, but one of the things I'd like to know about my home server is how much the CPU is idle, both on average and also plot it on the graph like all the other processes.

[Jeremy Collake]

Well, that's something that we can provide in the future for sure, though doesn't the Resource Monitor built into Windows tells you a lot, it doesn't provide much auditing or logging capacities.

[Nerva]

Windows Task Manager can show the System Idle thread if you enable seeing threads from all users, but it only gives me a sense of things -- I can see the instantaneous % of CPU that is idle, and I can see the total CPU time that has been idle, but there is no average % or ability to see the usage over some length of time.

[edkiefer]

To me to see CPU usage is way more important but you may have a specific reason to see avg idle times (To me its just inverse of CPU usage) .

[Nerva]

I agree that the CPU usage in the chart works just as well as plotting the system idle.   However, I'm not aware of any place in PL where it reports the average CPU usage, and that is something I'd like to know.

For one thing, opening the PL interface causes a big jump in CPU usage, so it makes it hard to assess how the system truly is running, since the chart only plots while the interface is open -- that's where having an average CPU usage or an average System Idle would be helpful.

[Hotrod]

Would it work for you if a line or 2 concerning system idle data was included in the "Insights" interface?

[Nerva]

Yes I think that should suffice.

[Jeremy Collake]

Hmm, good discussion. I think I could provide additional information in the ProBalance Insights dialog, such as the average CPU load over time. Now, there are some questions about how I'd calculate that ... specifically, whether I'd include time the PC is in a sleep mode (no).

The system idle thread utilization is something I can, and will, show in Lasso, as it does give a good representation of the inverse of the above calculation. It lets you know how often the CPU is in an idle state, while the PC is awake. Thus, I could use the 100-idle_thread_utilization as a good means to calculate overall average total system CPU utilization while the PC is awake.

It shouldn't be a problem, so I will add it one day, as soon as this bubbles up the list.

[Nerva]

Is there a reason the System Idle thread can't simply be included in the All Processes list of processes, the same as it is in Windows Task Manager when "Show processes from all users" is enabled?

[Jeremy Collake]

That is where I intended to show it, along with a display of average CPU utilization in the Insights dialog.