How To Find Out AIX UNIX CPU Information [AIX Commands]

Written By Steven Arends

IBM’s AIX is the right OS environment to run your IT business. As UNIX is the base of this OS, it’s highly secured.

If your company already owned one and as a system administrator, you might need to know its CPU’s specs. To know how many CPU cores you have under AIX, you must run some commands on it.how-to-find-out-aix-unix-cpu-information-d

In this article, I’ll show you the exact command lines to find CPU info in AIX. So, without any delay, let’s begin.

How to Get CPU Info of AIX UNIX

The main base of the AIX operating system is UNIX. As you know, UNIX OS supports multiuser and multitasking. This OS mainly focused on flexibility and adaptability. As this OS is highly secured, you must run some command lines to know the AIX’s CPU info.

Linux’s system mainly derived from Unix, and for this, you have to run command lines to do most of the tasks like updating the OS, installing apps, and so on. AIX system runs on a 64-bit POWER CPU. So, if you want to find the processor related info in this OS, apply the following command lines.how-to-get-cpu-info-of-aix-unix

Below are the commands to check AIX CPU info:

1. Processor Type

To determine the processor run the following command:

prtconf | grep -i “Processor Type”

If the processor is Power 4 type you’ll get the output as:

$ prtconf | grep -i “Processor Type”

Output: Processor Type: PowerPC_POWER4

Or else, if there is another processor type like Power 4 type RISC, you’ll get the output like the following:

$ prtconf | grep -i “Processor Type”

Output: Processor Type:  PowerPC_RS64-II

2. Processor Speed

You can also get the processor’s speed in AIX by running the following command:

lsattr -E -l proc0 | grep “Processor Speed”

So, run this command to check the CPU’s speed, and it’ll show processor’s speed in hertz (Hz). Here is another command you can run to get the CPU’s speed.

$ pmcycles -m

3. Current Available CPUs

While performing tasks, you can also know how many CPU cores are running at that instance. To check available running cores, run the below command line:

lparstat -i | grep CPU

If the AIX OS is running on a 24-core CPU, the above command will show you all the active cores. You’ll get something like the following output.

Online Virtual CPUs12
Maximum Virtual CPUs12
Virtual CPUs1
Maximum Physical CPUs in system24
Active Physical CPUs in system8
Active CPUs in Pool-
Shared Physical CPUs in system-
Physical CPU Percentage100.00%
Desired Virtual CPUs12
Moreover, if you only want to know the maximum number of available processors in the system, run the below command.

bindprocessor -q

Output: The available processors are:  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21                                                                                                                        23

So, these are some command lines you can try to get AIX’s CPU info. As you can see, these methods are a bit different than how we check CPU info on Linux.

How to Check RAM & Hard Disk Capacity of AIX UNIX

You can also check RAM and hard disk of the AIX UNIX operating system. It’s crucial to check the RAM’s capacity and bandwidth to ensure how many tasks you can run simultaneously. For a server system, storage is crucial, and you should check AIX’s storage capacity too.how-to-check-ram-and-hard-disk-capacity-of-aix-unix

Follow below commands to check RAM and hard disk capacity of AIX system:

Check RAM/Capacity

To know the RAM’s bandwidth and capacity you must run any of the following commands.

  • prtconf -m
  • bootinfo -r
  • lsattr -El sys0 -a realmem
  • lsattr -El mem0

Each command line is different, and they will show you various information about the installed RAM on AIX OS.

Check Hard Disks/Capacity

Run the below command lines in case you want to check installed hard disk information.

  • lsdev -Cc disk
  • lspv
  • bootinfo -s hdisk0

So, these are the command for AIX OS to check its CPU’s info, RAM & Hard Disks capacity.

What is IBM’s AIX?

IBM’s AIX is a short form for Advanced Interactive eXecutive. Computer’s hardware & software manufacturing giant IBM is the only seller of UNIX-based highly secured operating systems. This OS ensures security, scalability, and robust framework key for most IT business platforms.

Though this OS built on UNIX, some Linux hardcore fans call it “Ain’t UNIX”. The AIX is mainly used for enterprise servers and offers top-class security features like Kerberos V5 network authentication and dynamic secure tunnel authentication.

The system admins can use the AIX to split up its memory, CPU, and disk storage access among multiple tasks. AIX supports IBM’s 64-bit POWER CPU, which is also compatible with 32-bit programs. So, it offers backward compatibility.

After recompiling, it can run almost all Linux apps and supports Java 2. The main point is, it’s not a traditional all-PC users piece of cake, its mainly used as a server in large IT business companies and operated by top-class system engineer admins.

Around 13,251 big companies use IBM AIX, which are located in the USA mostly. The majority of these are IT & Services industries. Renowned IT companies like NetSuite Inc, Red Hat Inc, Blackfriars Group, Therap Services LLC, and many more use IBM’s AIX.

FAQs

How to get computational memory usage in AIX?

To get computational memory usage in the AIX system, use this command: vmstat -v. But make sure the AIX OS user has permission to use these commands.

How to get CPU usage info in AIX OS?

Authorized system admin can check the AIX OS CPU utilization with this command: sar -u 1 10.

Can I check the availability of processor resources in AIX?

You can verify the availability of processor resources by running this command: dsh -av “lsdev -C | grep proc | grep AVAILABLE” | wc –l.

What’s the latest version of AIX?

The AIX operating system released the latest 7.3 version.

How to find paging activity on the AIX operating system?

Run vmstat -w this command, and it will show you the Pages In & Pages Out of the AIX system.

Wrapping Up

AIX OS offers reliability, server consolidation, cluster-aware capabilities, workload management, and security. As a result, this operating system is popular among big IT companies which rely on hybrid cloud environments.

Most operations need to perform through commands. If you want to see the AIX’s CPU or other hardware info, you must run some commands to get that. In this article, I provided commands to see its CPU’s information.

For further help, please leave a comment in the comment box. Good luck!

About The Author
Steven Arends is a computer science graduate and tech enthusiast with over 10 years of experience in the field. He has a vast collection of computer hardware and loves exploring the latest advancements. As a contributing author to 10Scopes, Steven shares his expertise to make the world of technology more accessible and easier to understand for all readers.

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