cpulimit

A tool to throttle the CPU usage of other processes. More information: https://cpulimit.sourceforge.net/.

• Limit an existing process with PID 1234 to only use 25% of the CPU:

cpulimit --pid 1234 --limit 25%

• Limit an existing program by its executable name:

cpulimit --exe program --limit 25

• Launch a given program and limit it to only use 50% of the CPU:

cpulimit --limit 50 -- program argument1 argument2 ...

• Launch a program, limit its CPU usage to 50% and run cpulimit in the background:

cpulimit --limit 50 --background -- program

• Kill its process if the program’s CPU usage goes over 50%:

cpulimit --limit 50 --kill -- program

• Throttle both it and its child processes so that none go about 25% CPU:

cpulimit --limit 25 --monitor-forks -- program