4 commands to check cpu information on Linux
CPU hardware information
The cpu information includes details about the processor, like the architecture, vendor name, model, number of cores, speed of each core etc. There are quite a few commands on linux to get those details about the cpu hardware, and here is a brief about some of the commands.
1. /proc/cpuinfo
The /proc/cpuinfo file contains details about individual cpu cores.
Output its contents with less or cat.
For example:
$ less /proc/cpuinfo
Every processor or core is listed separately the various details about speed, cache size and model name are included in the description.
To count the number of processing units use grep with wc
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc -l 4
The number of processors shown by /proc/cpuinfo might not be the actual
number of cores on the processor. For example a processor with 2 cores
and hyperthreading would be reported as a processor with 4 cores.
To get the actual number of cores, check the core id for unique values
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'core id' core id : 0 core id : 2 core id : 1 core id : 3
So there are 4 different core ids. This indicates that there are 4 actual cores.
2. lscpu
lscpu is a small and quick command that does not need any options. It would simply print the cpu hardware details in a user-friendly format.$ lscpu Architecture: x86_64 CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit Byte Order: Little Endian CPU(s): 4 On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3 Thread(s) per core: 1 Core(s) per socket: 4 Socket(s): 1 NUMA node(s): 1 Vendor ID: GenuineIntel CPU family: 6 Model: 23 Stepping: 10 CPU MHz: 1998.000 BogoMIPS: 5303.14 Virtualization: VT-x L1d cache: 32K L1i cache: 32K L2 cache: 2048K NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-3
3. dmidecode
The dmidecode command displays some information about the cpu, which includes the socket type, vendor name and various flags.$ sudo dmidecode -t 4
# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.4 present.
Handle 0x0000, DMI type 4, 35 bytes
Processor Information
Socket Designation: LGA 775
Type: Central Processor
Family: Pentium D
Manufacturer: Intel(R) Corporation
ID: 7A 06 01 00 FF FB EB BF
Signature: Type 0, Family 6, Model 23, Stepping 10
Flags:
FPU (Floating-point unit on-chip)
VME (Virtual mode extension)
DE (Debugging extension)
PSE (Page size extension)
TSC (Time stamp counter)
MSR (Model specific registers)
PAE (Physical address extension)
MCE (Machine check exception)
CX8 (CMPXCHG8 instruction supported)
APIC (On-chip APIC hardware supported)
SEP (Fast system call)
MTRR (Memory type range registers)
PGE (Page global enable)
MCA (Machine check architecture)
CMOV (Conditional move instruction supported)
PAT (Page attribute table)
PSE-36 (36-bit page size extension)
CLFSH (CLFLUSH instruction supported)
DS (Debug store)
ACPI (ACPI supported)
MMX (MMX technology supported)
FXSR (FXSAVE and FXSTOR instructions supported)
SSE (Streaming SIMD extensions)
SSE2 (Streaming SIMD extensions 2)
SS (Self-snoop)
HTT (Multi-threading)
TM (Thermal monitor supported)
PBE (Pending break enabled)
Version: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q8400 @ 2.66GHz
Voltage: 1.6 V
External Clock: 333 MHz
Max Speed: 4000 MHz
Current Speed: 2666 MHz
Status: Populated, Enabled
Upgrade: Socket LGA775
L1 Cache Handle: 0x0003
L2 Cache Handle: 0x0001
L3 Cache Handle: Not Provided
Serial Number: Not Specified
Asset Tag: Not Specified
Part Number: Not Specified
4. cpuid
The cpuid command fetches CPUID information about Intel and AMD x86 processors.The program can be installed with apt on ubuntu
$ sudo apt-get install cpuid
