Calculating CPU Usage of a Process in Android

Question

I am trying to calculate the CPU usage of a process in Android as follows, however i am not sure if its right due to the output produced.

To convert from jiffie to

Answer 1

Explanation of error

I suspect that you used the value in /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq as your hertz value. This is incorrect since that file gives you the CPU hardware clock frequency, but you must use the Linux kernel clock frequency as your hertz value.

The CPU hardware clock and Linux kernel clock are different. The Linux kernel -- which Android runs -- has its own timer (clock) which it updates at a certain frequency; the frequency at which this timer updates is the kernel hertz (HZ) value.

For historical reasons, the clock tick values listed in Linux proc and sys files are scaled from the kernel HZ frequency to a common frequency via the Linux kernel USER_HZ constant. It is this USER_HZ constant which we must use as the hertz value in our calculations.

Acquisition of data

• uptime: 226.06 seconds
• utime: 38 clock ticks
• stime: 32 clock ticks
• starttime: 13137 clock ticks
• Hertz: 100 (Linux kernel USER_HZ constant)
  • This is under the assumption of an unmodified Android system.

Computation

total_time = utime + stime = 38 + 32 = 70

seconds = uptime - (starttime / Hertz) = 226.06 - (13137 / 100) = 94.69

cpu_usage = 100 * ((total_time / Hertz) / seconds) = 100 * ((70 / 100) / 94.69) = 0.7392...

Solution

The total CPU usage of your process is about 0.739%. If this seems small, remember that your process shares the CPU with all the other processes on the system: the majority of normal processes are idle for most of their life, so any one process will typically average a low total CPU usage.