i've got some new servers.

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5504 @ 2.00GHz
16G mem

os is rhel 5 update 3,and kernel use 2.6.30

when network traffic is heavey,two processes eat much cpu. almost 100%

top - 12:12:01 up 1 day, 45 min, 1 user, load average: 2.26, 2.41, 2.34
Tasks: 129 total, 6 running, 123 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.9%us, 0.5%sy, 0.0%ni, 72.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 24.6%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 16623048k total, 2114100k used, 14508948k free, 91324k buffers
Swap: 2096472k total, 0k used, 2096472k free, 629080k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
22 root 15 -5 0 0 0 R 100.1 0.0 1483:04 ksoftirqd/6
16 root 15 -5 0 0 0 R 99.8 0.0 1484:13 ksoftirqd/4


i found there is too much softinterupts,and it's always on cpu4 and cpu6

CPU4 CPU6 CPU7
0: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-edge timer
1: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-edge i8042
8: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-edge rtc0
9: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi acpi
12: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-edge i8042
14: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-edge ide0
15: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-edge ide1
16: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_h
18: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_h
19: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_h
21: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi uhci_h
23: 0 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ehci_h
28: 53967 0 0 IO-APIC-fasteoi ioc0
57: 133079 0 0 PCI-MSI-edge eth0-r
58: 0 0 0 PCI-MSI-edge eth0-t
59: 0 0 0 PCI-MSI-edge eth0
60: 0 35083081 0 PCI-MSI-edge eth1-r
61: 0 24429007 0 PCI-MSI-edge eth1-t
62: 3 0 0 PCI-MSI-edge eth1
NMI: 0 0 0 Non-maskable interrupts
LOC: 89246974 89246833 89246761 Local timer interrupts
SPU: 0 0 0 Spurious interrupts
RES: 359 695 16283 Rescheduling interrupts
CAL: 137 199 181 Function call interrupts
TLB: 98 10251 147 TLB shootdowns
TRM: 0 0 0 Thermal event interrupts



how do i sovle this problem,help me please.

Load average is in normal(i mean acceptable range)


some service may share more than 100% CPU when its utilizing huge work load.

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5504 @ 2.00GHz is a 4 core processor, i feel this overall cpu usage is normal

Google, "CPU Shielding Linux" and you'll find a solution in which to isolate a CPU or set of CPU's to do ONLY IRQ processing so that other processes will not use those processors and be interrupted by interrupts......(Redundant?)