Wondering how to view the exact specifications of the CPU on a Linux server? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
Whether you’ve just spun up a new cloud server or are simply curious about the CPU information on your local machine, you can use the following commands on any Linux server to gain insights into the underlying CPU and its architecture and speed.
Get an overview
lscpu displays a quick overview of the CPU and its architecture.
lscpuThe output should look somewhat like below.
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Address sizes: 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 3
On-line CPU(s) list: 0-2
Vendor ID: AuthenticAMD
Model name: AMD EPYC Processor
CPU family: 23
Model: 49
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 3
Socket(s): 1
Stepping: 0
BogoMIPS: 4890.80
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm rep_good n
opl cpuid extd_apicid tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm cmp_legacy
cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw topoext perfctr_core ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp vmmcall fsgsbase bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 rdseed adx smap clflushop
t clwb sha_ni xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 clzero xsaveerptr wbnoinvd arat umip rdpid arch_capabilities
Virtualization features:
Hypervisor vendor: KVM
Virtualization type: full
Caches (sum of all):
L1d: 96 KiB (3 instances)
L1i: 96 KiB (3 instances)
L2: 1.5 MiB (3 instances)
L3: 16 MiB (1 instance)
NUMA:
NUMA node(s): 1
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-2
Vulnerabilities:
Gather data sampling: Not affected
Itlb multihit: Not affected
L1tf: Not affected
Mds: Not affected
Meltdown: Not affected
Mmio stale data: Not affected
Retbleed: Mitigation; untrained return thunk; SMT disabled
Spec rstack overflow: Mitigation; SMT disabled
Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
Spectre v1: Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Spectre v2: Mitigation; Retpolines, IBPB conditional, STIBP disabled, RSB filling, PBRSB-eIBRS Not affected
Srbds: Not affected
Tsx async abort: Not affected
In this case, the system is powered by 3x AMD EPYC Processor cores – or threads, depending on your system setup.
Get information about individual cores
If you wish to view the specifications for each processor core, you can do so by viewing the contents of the file /proc/cpuinfo using the Linux utility cat.
cat /proc/cpuinfoThe output should look somewhat like below.
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 23
model : 49
model name : AMD EPYC Processor
stepping : 0
microcode : 0x1000065
cpu MHz : 2445.404
cache size : 512 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 3
core id : 0
cpu cores : 3
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm rep_good nopl cpuid extd_apicid tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm cmp_legacy cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw topoext perfctr_core ssbd ibrs ibpb stibp vmmcall fsgsbase bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 rdseed adx smap clflushopt clwb sha_ni xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 clzero xsaveerptr wbnoinvd arat umip rdpid arch_capabilities
bugs : sysret_ss_attrs null_seg spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass retbleed smt_rsb srso
bogomips : 4890.80
TLB size : 1024 4K pages
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
...As you can see, this way of getting CPU information shows you the CPU speed in MHz as well – which, in most cases, is probably what you’re looking for.
Conclusion
Viewing CPU information on Linux can be done natively in two different ways – using lscpu and by looking inside /proc/cpuinfo using the Linux utility cat.
Have any questions? Please let us know.
