Why does htop use so much CPU?

[gqqnbig]

On my android, htop from termux uses 12% of CPU, while top uses merely 2%.

When I use the regular htop on Linux, it uses little CPU resources. What's the problem of termux htop?

[sylirre]

There could be reasons such as:

1. CPU frequency scaling.

   Android device significantly lowers frequency when idle for power saving and it may not rapidly get scaled up. Scaling governor on Android device differs from what is used on normal Linux distribution.

   In this condition program will consume more CPU time and its usage will shown as higher than normal.

2. Termux console UI update performance issues: blocking may be caused and that contributes to increased CPU time consumption.

   To verify whether this is the case, you can start SSH server in Termux and connect from other non-Termux machine and start htop.

Edit: I don't think it is specific exactly to Termux build of htop. I had similar issue with /system/xbin/htop bundled with custom ROMs.

[gqqnbig]

I got the reading from an SSH session, meaning termux started a sshd on Android, and I connected to it from my computer. In this case, the CPU of htop was 12% while top used 2%.