I was looking at the task manager in Windows 10 and for the first time noticed a secondary dashed line below the solid? What does this line indicate?
Windows 10 – What is the Secondary CPU Usage Graph Line in Task Manager?
cputask-managerwindows 10
Related Solutions
To see individual graphs, "Change graph to" > "Logical processors"
The task manager can also show a heat map of the cores to better show what they are doing (instead of having tiny graphs). This means that if you have a large number of cores (eg. 160), it will be easier to interpret the data:
More tips on using the task manager can be found at 8 Windows 8 Task Manager Tips
Sources:
- http://www.thewindowsclub.com/configure-windws-8-multi-core-support
- http://www.online-tech-tips.com/windows-8/8-windows-8-task-manager-tips/
- http://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-8-task-manager-logical-cores-hyperthreading-win8,13848.html
- http://www.extremetech.com/computing/102207-windows-8-task-manager-good-news-if-you-have-more-than-1-cpu
It's a debugging tool for programmers.
It takes a snapshot of all the stuff that that program has stored in RAM and writes it to a file on disk. Programmers can then pore through that information to try to understand what went wrong.
Memory dumps (core dumps) are mostly useless unless you're a programmer with access to the source code of the program whose memory you dumped to disk.
Best Answer
That looks like the kernel time graph. Right-click the graph and see if this option is ticked.
Kernel time has been available for a while but it was more hidden.
Seems it was available from at least Windows XP : https://blog.codinghorror.com/everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-task-manager-but-were-afraid-to-ask/