Number of processor cores confusion

[Colin Law]

On Tue, 10 Nov 2020 at 16:14, Chris Green <cl at isbd.net> wrote:
> ..
> Looking at gnome-system-monitor I can't really see how what is says
> can be true, what sorts of things can *really* happen in parallel
> without all sorts of problems?

Remember your foreground application is only one thing that is going
on in the computer.  There are all sorts of background activities
going on all the time which will run in parallel to your foreground
app.  For example network activity, flushing disc buffers to disc,
time sync, memory management, downloading system updates.  If you have
browser pages open they often have background processes running and if
at the same time you run a spreadsheet the browser processes keep
going.  All of those will run in separate cores.

Can you post an example of something in system monitor that you don't believe?

Colin