To simply display the number of Physical processors, simply run the command with the -p option as follows:

root@sunserver # psrinfo -p
2

where 2 implies that there are 2 physical processors installed on the system.

If you would like to check the number of Virtual Processors on each of these Physical processors then type the command with the “-pv” arguement as follows:

root@ server:/root$ uname -a

SunOS server 5.10 Generic_137111-02 sun4v sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise-T5120

root@server:/root$ psrinfo -pv

The physical processor has 32 virtual processors (0-31)

  UltraSPARC-T2 (cpuid 0 clock 1165 MHz)

The above indicates that there was only one physical processor (UltraSPARC-T2) on the T5120 server which has 32 Virtual processors. Each virtual processor is an entity with its own interrupt ID, capable of executing independent threads.

In simple terms, the number of Virtual Processors supported by a physical CPU is

“Number of Core” x “Number of threads”

For instance, the above is on a T5120 server with the UltraSPARC-T2. This CPU  has 4 cores and each core can support 8 threads and that gives us 32 Virtual processors.

The number of Virtual processors on a Server is simply the total Virtual processors supported on each of the physical processor.

In the following T5140 server there are 2 Physical UltraSPARC-T2+ processors with 6 cores, each supporting 8 threads which means we get 48 Virtual processors per Physical processor and hence a total of 96 Virtual processors (sum of VPs on individual processors) for the server:

root@ bserver:/root$ uname -a

SunOS bserver 5.10 Generic_137111-02 sun4v sparc SUNW,T5140

root@ bserver:/root$ psrinfo -pv

The physical processor has 48 virtual processors (0-23 32-55)

  UltraSPARC-T2+ (cpuid 0 clock 1167 MHz)

The physical processor has 48 virtual processors (64-71 80-119)

  UltraSPARC-T2+ (cpuid 64 clock 1167 MHz)

In earlier versions of Solaris, the -p arguement is not supported and hence wouldn’t provide this summarised output on the counts of the physical and Virtual CPUs.

Using psrinfo

psrinfo displays more detailed information of the Processors including the number of Physical processors on the system and the number of virtual processors on the system. Each virtual processor is in its own a seperate entity.

Run psrinfo as root without arguments gives a quick summary of the processors with its IDs and the time since online.

# which psrinfo
/usr/sbin/psrinfo

sunsolaris# psrinfo
0       on-line   since 05/09/2008 19:41:32

For a more detailed output use the verbose option. This gives much more detailed information including processor type, operating speed etc for every available processor.

sunsolaris# psrinfo -v
Status of virtual processor 0 as of: 05/09/2008 20:05:34
  on-line since 05/09/2008 19:41:32.
  The i386 processor operates at 2000 MHz,
        and has an i387 compatible floating point processor.
       
Using prtiag

This can once again give a summarised information on the processor version and its ID.

sunsolaris# which prtdiag
/usr/sbin/prtdiag

sunsolaris# prtdiag
System Configuration: VMware, Inc. VMware Virtual Platform
BIOS Configuration: Phoenix Technologies LTD 6.00 04/17/2006

==== Processor Sockets ====================================

Version                          Location Tag
——————————– ————————–
Pentium(R) Pro                   CPU socket #0

…..
….

Using prtconf

Based on the installed drivers, you can find the information on the CPUs on the system.

sunsolaris# which prtconf
/usr/sbin/prtconf

sunsolaris#prtconf
System Configuration:  Sun Microsystems  i86pc
Memory size: 512 Megabytes
System Peripherals (Software Nodes):
…
..
…
cpus (driver not attached)
      cpu, instance #0 (driver not attached)

Not much information on my solaris 10 system running on a virtual server.