under what conditions should I see multiple concurrent threads with BIND 9.3.2b2

[Rick Jones]

Rick Jones wrote:
> It may be a matter of mis-interpreting the output of top, or perhaps top being 
> confused:
> 
> top - 11:36:23 up 18:43,  2 users,  load average: 3.03, 1.81, 1.47
> Tasks:  70 total,   2 running,  68 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> Cpu0  : 60.2% us, 22.5% sy,  0.0% ni,  4.6% id,  0.0% wa,  1.6% hi, 11.1% si
> Cpu1  : 64.9% us, 26.0% sy,  0.0% ni,  7.2% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  1.9% si
> Cpu2  : 65.5% us, 23.5% sy,  0.0% ni,  8.7% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  2.2% si
> Cpu3  : 60.7% us, 21.1% sy,  0.0% ni,  5.2% id,  0.0% wa,  1.8% hi, 11.2% si
> Mem:  16659952k total,   587008k used, 16072944k free,    66560k buffers
> Swap:  1052144k total,        0k used,  1052144k free,   233616k cached
> 
>    PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> 10888 root      23   0  207m  12m 3616 S 99.9  0.1  44:12.26 named
> 10921 raj       16   0  3600 2112 1664 R  0.1  0.0   0:01.42 top
> 
> 
> I was expecting top to show a larger % for "named" - when the named was not as 
> heavily loaded, and the per-CPU lines were showing 70ish% idle, top was showing 
> named as using 91% CPU, which made me think that when all CPUs were fully busy 
> it would show named > 100% CPU.  

Here is a variation on that theme:

top - 17:19:05 up 2 days, 26 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.66, 0.15, 0.05
Tasks:  70 total,   1 running,  69 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu0  : 27.4% us, 16.0% sy,  0.0% ni, 54.8% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  1.8% si
Cpu1  : 27.4% us, 17.5% sy,  0.0% ni, 53.3% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  1.7% si
Cpu2  : 27.1% us, 15.7% sy,  0.0% ni, 55.0% id,  0.3% wa,  0.0% hi,  1.9% si
Cpu3  : 28.7% us, 16.5% sy,  0.0% ni, 39.0% id,  0.0% wa,  1.8% hi, 14.0% si
Mem:  16659952k total,   591264k used, 16068688k free,    66768k buffers
Swap:  1052144k total,        0k used,  1052144k free,   241632k cached

   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
10888 root      23   0  207m  12m 3632 S 99.9  0.1 214:55.55 named
10955 raj       16   0  3600 2112 1664 R  0.2  0.0   1:59.38 top