System state too high for too long...

["Dan A. Dickey" <dan.dickey@savvis.net>]

This problem has now been persistent enough in the last few kernels
I've run that I've subscribed (once again) to the linux-kernel list
and would like to report it.
I'm using gentoo-sources-2.6.11-r9.

When the system is compiling something, the state typically
stays at about 85-95% system time.  This just really does not
seem right for my workload, and additionally only appeared
a few releases ago (sorry, I didn't bother to track it - I thought
it might go away in a release or two; but it has not).

Here is a little output of 'vmstat 5' when this is happening:
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- 
----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us 
sy id wa
 1  0  12752  61548  57252 211092    0    0     2    50 1083   810 11 
89  0  0
 1  0  12752  57572  57320 211160    0    0     0    63 1089   683  9 
91  0  0
 1  0  12752  63288  57328 211220    0    0     8    39 1084   765 11 
89  0  0
 1  0  12752  60648  57348 211200    0    0     0    56 1086   647  6 
94  0  0
 1  0  12752  54972  57348 211200    0    0     0     3 1079   659  8 
92  0  0
 1  0  12752  62284  57348 211268    0    0     4    53 1087   807 17 
83  0  0
 1  0  12752  59400  57356 211328    0    0     0    34 1222  1919 17 
83  0  0

Can someone help me to debug this further?  Thanks.
	-Dan

-- 
Dan A. Dickey
dan.dickey@savvis.net

SAVVIS
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