Robert,

The CPU minimum and maximum deals with the global percentage of CPU
available.  For instance, a CPU limit of 25% on a four processor system
equates to 100% of one processor or 25% of each of four processors.  There
is no way to nail a workgroup to a given processor, so at times more than
one CPU can be servicing a given workgroup's processes.

The explanation below is from the manual "Using the HP3000 Workload
Manager."  Perhaps its explanation is clearer than mine:

CPU Percentage Bounds.

User-defined workgroups also allow the specification of minimum and
maximum CPU percentage bounds.  The minimum percentage serves as a
guarantee.  Processes in a workgroup with minimum CPU percentage equal to
20% will be guaranteed 20% of the CPU(s), provided they have enough
demand to use the 20%.  If the processes demand more than 20%, they can
receive more, providing it does not violate the minimum values for other
workgroups.  Thus, the minimum is a true minimum and can be exceeded.  It
is not a target amount.

The maximum percentage serves to restrict the CPU consumption of a
workgroup.  Processes in a workgroup with a maximum CPU percentage equal
to 50% will never receive more than 50% of the CPU. If no other
workgroups require CPU, the system will idle rather than allow the
workgroup to exceed its maximum.

The sum of all CPU minimums should not exceed the amount necessary to
provide sufficient "leftover" CPU for the system processes.  As an
alternative to guaranteeing a minimum to workgroups, the system manager
might choose to set a maximum CPU percentage on a workgroup that tends to
starve other workgroups.  The maximum will constrain the workgroup to run
within the allocated amount of CPU.

By the way, I've been using this product since its introduction and I
really like it.  It has kept the peace among all the competing groups of
users for CPU time on my system.  Once you have it set up and tuned to your
system's needs, you can pretty much forget about it!

HTH,

John Hornberger
Sr. Systems Programmer
SPX Corporation