if num_active_processes is much larger than number of cores, then your software architecture is wrong and you're just stress testing your OS's lock primitives a

if num_active_processes is much larger than number of cores, then your software architecture is wrong and you're just stress testing your OS's lock primitives and CPU's TLB logic. Lots of threads/processed blocked on stuff is ok. Lots of them all wanting to run and be CPU bound is bad design