perhaps it's not as easy I thought..

to me it shows the current frequency, although I've got a smp kernel. (2.6.18)
Google said the same for most users.
e.g. http://docs.huihoo.com/gentoo/resources/document-listing/power-management-guide.html
So I'd guess it's dependent on the kernel version, I wasn't able to find something more specific in the kernel documentation.
A short research in the kernel sources didn't answer this, too.

What google also told me..

There is more info in the files
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_cur_freq
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_max_freq
/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_min_freq
cpuinfo_cur_freq is only readable by root on my system, so this could lead again into problems.

At least my question how the max frequency can be determined has been answered. :-)

In reply to Re^3: Current processor frequency? by misc
in thread Current processor frequency? by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.