In a previous article, we put together a list of 10 useful commands to collect system and hardware information in Linux. In this guide, we will narrow down to the CPU/processor, and show you various ways of extracting detailed information about your machine CPU.
- Linux Get Memory Info
- Linux Get Memory Vendor
- Memory Slots On Computer
- Linux Memory Slot Information
- Linux Get Memory Slot Info
- Check Memory Slots
Just to give you an overview, we will query information such as CPU architecture, vendor_id, model, model name, number of CPU cores, speed of each core and lots more.
Essentially, the /proc/cpuinfo contains this all info, every other command/utility gets its output from this file.
Dmidecode shows the number of slots available for the controller. There are up to 4 DMI types, 2 can be memory arrays, and 2 can be specific slots. 2 are less common. The information in dmidecode/inxi is extremely unreliable when it comes to the array data, but the actual slot data is generally very reliable.
With that said, below are 9 commands for getting info about your Linux CPU.
1. Get CPU Info Using cat Command
You can simply view the information of your system CPU by viewing the contents of the /proc/cpuinfo file with the help of cat command as follows:
Linux Get Memory Info
To get a little specific, you can employ grep command – a CLI tool for searching plain-text data for lines matching a regular expression. This can help you only output vendor name, model name, number of processors, number of cores etc:
Suggested Read:How to Use ‘cat’ and ‘tac’ Commands with Examples in Linux
2. lscpu Command – Shows CPU Architecture Info
The command lscpu prints CPU architecture information from sysfs and /proc/cpuinfo as shown below:
3. cpuid Command – Shows x86 CPU
The command cpuid dumps complete information about the CPU(s) collected from the CPUID instruction, and also discover the exact model of x86 CPU(s) from that information.
Make sure to install it before running it.
Once installed, run cpuid to collect information concerning the x86 CPU.
4. dmidecode Command – Shows Linux Hardware Info
dmidecode is a tool for retrieving hardware information of any Linux system. It dumps a computer’s DMI (a.k.a SMBIOS) table contents in a human-readable format for easy retrieval. The SMBIOS specification defines various DMI types, for CPU, use “processor” as follows:
5. Inxi Tool – Shows Linux System Information
Inxi is a powerful command line system information script intended for both console and IRC (Internet Relay Chat). You can use it to instantly retrieve hardware information.
Linux Get Memory Vendor
You can install like so:
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To display complete CPU information, including per CPU clock-speed and CPU max speed (if available), use the -C flag as follows:
6. lshw Tool – List Hardware Configuration
lshw is a minimal tool for gathering in-depth information on the hardware configuration of a computer. You can use the -C option to select the hardware class, CPU in this case:
7. hardinfo – Shows Hardware Info in GTK+ Window
hardinfo displays hardware information in a GTK+ window, you can install it as follows:
Once you have it installed, type:
It also enables you to generate a system hardware info report by clicking on the “Generate Report” button. From the interface below, click on “Generate” to proceed. Note that you can choose the hardware info category to be generated.
Generate System Information Report
Once you have generated the report in html format, you can view it from a web browser as shown below.
8. hwinfo – Shows Present Hardware Info
hwinfo is used to extract info about hardware present in a Linux system. To display info about your CPU, use the --cpu
Linux Memory Slot Information
9. nproc – Print Number of Processing Units
nproc command is used to show the number of processing unit present on your computer:
Linux Get Memory Slot Info
For additional usage info and options, read through the man pages of these commands like this:
Also check out:
Check Memory Slots
That’s it for now! You can share with us additional ways of extracting CPU information in Linux via the feedback form below.