Load average refers to the average number of processes in the run queue, i.e. processes that are either running on the CPU, waiting for the CPU, or in an uninterruptible sleep state waiting on I/O (typically waiting for disk activity). It is typically assessed over 1-minute, 5-minute, and 15-minute intervals. It can be assessed using a number of tools, with „top‟, „w‟, „uptime‟, „xload‟, and „tload‟ being among the most widely used. It can also be assessed by reading the contents of /proc/loadavg.