Here’s how to display the CPU info for your computer on Linux from the Linux command line.
The CPU (Central Processing Unit) in your computer does all of the number crunching and processing and logic that your computer needs to do to, well, compute. It’s the brains of the whole operation.
The type of CPU, how old it is, and how fast it is determines how responsive your computer is and how quickly it can do things.
CPU Info From /proc/cpuinfo
One of the core concepts which Linux (generally) adheres to is that all aspects of the computer system are represented in the filesystem – including hardware.
The /proc directory is a virtual filesystem that contains information about system resources. This includes information about the CPU.
More information can be found by running:
man proc
..to view the user manual.
So, to view the information on the CPU installed on your system, you simply need to view the file which contains it:
cat /proc/cpuinfo
The cat command is used to view the contents of the file stored at /proc/cpuinfo
The above command will output something like the following:
processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 142 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7360U CPU @ 2.30GHz stepping : 9 microcode : 0xea cpu MHz : 2304.000 cache size : 4096 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 2 core id : 0 cpu cores : 2 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 22 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 ss ht syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch invpcid_single pti fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 invpcid rdseed adx smap clflushopt xsaveopt xsavec dtherm arat pln pts bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs itlb_multihit srbds bogomips : 4608.00 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: processor : 1 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 142 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7360U CPU @ 2.30GHz stepping : 9 microcode : 0xea cpu MHz : 2304.000 cache size : 4096 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 2 core id : 1 cpu cores : 2 apicid : 1 initial apicid : 1 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 22 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 ss ht syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch invpcid_single pti fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 invpcid rdseed adx smap clflushopt xsaveopt xsavec dtherm arat pln pts bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 spec_store_bypass l1tf mds swapgs itlb_multihit srbds bogomips : 4608.00 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management:
My computer has two processor cores, so the information for the two processors is listed.
You probably only really want the model name of your CPU so you can compare it with others – you can limit this output by searching the output with the grep command:
grep -m 1 'model name' /proc/cpuinfo
Which will output something like:
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7360U CPU @ 2.30GHz
The -m 1 option supplied to grep will return only the model of one of the CPUs – otherwise, you’ll get the model for each core on a multi-core CPU, and it’s almost certain that they will be the same.
CPU Info From lscpu
The lscpu command can also be used to display information about your CPU. Simply run:
lscpu
And you’ll get output that looks something like this:
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
Address sizes: 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
CPU(s): 2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 2
Socket(s): 1
NUMA node(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 142
Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7360U CPU @ 2.30GHz
Stepping: 9
CPU MHz: 2304.000
BogoMIPS: 4608.00
Hypervisor vendor: KVM
Virtualisation type: full
L1d cache: 64 KiB
L1i cache: 64 KiB
L2 cache: 512 KiB
L3 cache: 4 MiB
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0,1
Vulnerability Itlb multihit: KVM: Mitigation: VMX unsupported
Vulnerability L1tf: Mitigation; PTE Inversion
Vulnerability Mds: Vulnerable: Clear CPU buffers attempted, no microcode; SMT Host state unknown
Vulnerability Meltdown: Mitigation; PTI
Vulnerability Spec store bypass: Vulnerable
Vulnerability Spectre v1: Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Vulnerability Spectre v2: Mitigation; Full generic retpoline, STIBP disabled, RSB filling
Vulnerability Srbds: Unknown: Dependent on hypervisor status
Vulnerability Tsx async abort: Not affected
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2
ss ht syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid tsc_known_freq pni pclmul
qdq ssse3 fma cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rd
rand hypervisor lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch invpcid_single pti fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bm
i2 invpcid rdseed adx smap clflushopt xsaveopt xsavec dtherm arat pln pts
This output is quite similar to that supplied by viewing the contents of /proc/cpuinfo – however it is not duplicated for each core.
