Mac Pro: kernel_task hog issue

[swo]

I restarted my Mac Pro for the first time today and noticed something weird in my Activity Monitor. Process ID 0 kernel_task was using 25% of my CPU, or one whole core. This lasted about 10-15 minutes and then went down to 1% of overall CPU usage.

I wondered what is happening, is this a behind the scenes 'tidying up' of drives?

Cuts my processing power by a 1/4 if it were to happen on a regular basis.

Anybody have any idea what this is?

 

[mkrishnan]

It's almost certainly just operating system housekeeping types of activities. PID 0 *is* the operating system -- it's the kernel. It's normal for the OS to be CPU-intensive for a little while after boot, although 15 minutes sounds excessive. It could be that it was doing some background task and just saw the available Mac Pro goodness and decided to tap some of it? I would think that it wouldn't be a practical issue for you, although I'm not certain.

 

[swo]

thanx for the info

i suspected as much - but was a little freaked out at the amount, and while it was going on I had the what if that happens all the time thought!

thanx for the info -
that eases my mind a bit.

 

[gekko513]

I'm guessing it was indexing your hard drive for use with Spotlight. If so, that's a one time occurence.