The way to ensure every bit of CPU is being consumed is to ensure the CPU busyness reaches the level where there is always a process waiting in be serviced. Said another way, make sure there is always a process queued up and ready to run. So for a batch-centric system, you will want to run the CPU busyness at a much higher level than you would for an OLTP-centric system.

Don't get carried away during batch processing times and allow a massive queue, because the operating system must manage processing scheduling. The longer the queue, the more time the operating must spend managing the queue. The key is to ensure there is always a process ready to run, not a hundred processes ready to run.

Obviously, we need to quantify the length of the queue and the busyness of the CPU subsystem. This is the focus of the next section.