High load average

[soichih]

I am accessing a bunch of .tar files with ratarmount stored on a remote filesystem through sshfs.

As each file had to be accessed via sshfs, I am seeing a high iowait. I think that's normal, as it has to wait for the data to be xfer from remote server. However I am also seeing a very high cpu load.

I don't quite understand how cpu load is calculated, but my feeling is that having high iowait shouldn't automatically lead to high cpu load - as each ratarmount should just sit and wait for each block to be transferred from the remote server before requesting more work to do on CPU.. I was just curious if anyone else might be seeing high cpu load while using ratarmount and if this is normal.