Hi,
If it is not the processes maybe it is the harddisk/filesystem ?
Log files being written by multiple users to different files can have a harsh
effect on the performance of the operating system if the harddisk isn't up to
it.
As I recall from my university sessions :) Cadence tends to write
still at the client with the VLSI tools. Some of the users here are
running heavy simulations (all userspace, almost 0 kernel time), at
times a single process can hog the entire system. I have no idea how
that happens, as this is a fairly modern kernel (the slightly older
scheduler of RHEL4's 2.6.9
