CPU Information on Linux and OS X
This is small blog post detailing how to obtain information on your CPU on Linux and Mac OSX. These commands give information such as the instruction set of the processor, the type of processor, the number of cores, number of CPUs, information about the caches etc.
Linux :
In Linux, the “proc” file system is providing most of the important information on the system. It interfaces with the kernel to obtain these information and is mounted as “/proc” on most of the Unix machines. More information can be found here.
The command to obtain information is this one.
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$ /proc/cpuinfo
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If using GCC to compile C programs, you might want to use the “-march=cpu-type” to optimise your compilation to your type of processor and it’s set of instructions, to do that you can use use the following command :
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$ grep flags /proc/cpuinfo
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Another useful command on multiple linux distributions is this one :
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$ lscpu
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The command try to display information on your CPU in a human readable format but do not include all the information available.
OS X :
On OS X mountain lion and probably some other versions, the commands to use are a bit different, some general information about the system can be found by using the “system_profiler” command. This command includes some simple information on the system in use:
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$ system_profiler
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However more dedicated information can be found by using the “sysctl” command which is an interface to dynamically change system variables and obtain detailed informations on the system. This command is also present on BSD systems.
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$ sysctl hw
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This command will give you the following type of output :
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hw.ncpu: 4
hw.byteorder: 1234
hw.memsize: 8589934592
hw.activecpu: 4
hw.physicalcpu: 2
hw.physicalcpu_max: 2
hw.logicalcpu: 4
hw.logicalcpu_max: 4
hw.cputype: 7
hw.cpusubtype: 4
hw.cpu64bit_capable: 1
hw.cpufamily: 1463508716
hw.cacheconfig: 4 2 2 4 0 0 0 0 0 0
hw.cachesize: 8589934592 32768 262144 4194304 0 0 0 0 0 0
hw.pagesize: 4096
hw.busfrequency: 4800000000
hw.busfrequency_min: 4800000000
hw.busfrequency_max: 4800000000
hw.cpufrequency: 2800000000
hw.cpufrequency_min: 2800000000
hw.cpufrequency_max: 2800000000
hw.cachelinesize: 64
hw.l1icachesize: 32768
hw.l1dcachesize: 32768
hw.l2cachesize: 262144
hw.l3cachesize: 4194304
hw.tbfrequency: 1000000000
hw.packages: 1
hw.optional.floatingpoint: 1
hw.optional.mmx: 1
hw.optional.sse: 1
hw.optional.sse2: 1
hw.optional.sse3: 1
hw.optional.supplementalsse3: 1
hw.optional.sse4_1: 1
hw.optional.sse4_2: 1
hw.optional.x86_64: 1
hw.optional.aes: 1
hw.optional.avx1_0: 0
hw.optional.rdrand: 0
hw.optional.f16c: 0
hw.optional.enfstrg: 0
hw.cputhreadtype: 1
hw.machine = x86_64
hw.model = MacBookPro6,2
hw.ncpu = 4
hw.byteorder = 1234
hw.physmem = 2147483648
hw.usermem = 877899776
hw.pagesize = 4096
hw.epoch = 0
hw.vectorunit = 1
hw.busfrequency = 4294967295
hw.cpufrequency = 2800000000
hw.cachelinesize = 64
hw.l1icachesize = 32768
hw.l1dcachesize = 32768
hw.l2settings = 1
hw.l2cachesize = 262144
hw.l3settings = 1
hw.l3cachesize = 4194304
hw.tbfrequency = 1000000000
hw.memsize = 8589934592
hw.availcpu = 4
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As you can see, the command is displaying specific informations such as the instruction set supported by your processor amongst many other information. For more information on the sysctl command use RTFM.
Have fun.
