You can't have 100% utilization of any processing capacity (ignore queues) without reaching this type of failure. 100% CPU utilization is essentially just meani

You can't have 100% utilization of any processing capacity (ignore queues) without reaching this type of failure. 100% CPU utilization is essentially just meaning you filled up the queue on your worker server. > The inflows to the queue are less than the outflows, despite every worker spending 100% of its time processing tasks. Right, but at some point they will have to have SOME idle time. If they are NEVER idle the queue by definition is growing, not shrinking, as you said. Unless you have some system that monitors queue length and doesn't add jobs if it is like >n, which is what the article suggests (maximum queue size). But then you have to figure out what you do with those jobs that can't be added, which probably means just creating some kind of queue higher up in the pipe. If they are processing more than is being added, eventually things will run out of the queue.