Hubert Feyrer said:
#: > and i'm observing that the system load - either as reported by xload or uptime
#: > - is only updated every 5 seconds. (Of course xload is started with -update 1).
#: > 
#: > Is there any reason for this behaviour?
#: 

To which Chris Demetriou replied:

#: Looking at the sources and the revision logs, just about the only
#: thing that _hasn't_ changed in sys/vm/vm_meter.c is the fact that
#: load averages are calculated once every 5 seconds...
#: 
#: As far as i can tell, it was that way in both Net/2 and in 4.4-Lite.

This behaviour goes back to (time_t) loadav->time_0 as near as I can tell;
it goes back to at least the VAXen days of 4.2 (I don't know if 4.1
ever calculated uptimes).

#: chris
#: