Confusing BlueHost Chat: Server Load = Percentage?

So... I just had an interesting chat over at BlueHost.

One of my clients' sites has been really sluggish lately, and I'm trying to patch and streamline what I can until we can get them migrated over to something more stable.

Anyway, I was looking over things in cPanel and saw that the Server Load was way in the red zone (over 24 on an 8 CPU box)! So I jumped into their live chat, thinking that was the best way to help bring it to their attention quickly.

Here's what I got instead:


Travis [10:13:19 AM]: box439's Server Load is skyrocketing -- in just the past three minutes it has gone from 21.24 (8 cpus) up to 34.12! Even now, it's "stabilizing" at 25 (which is WAY too much for an 8 cpu server).

Brent [10:13:46 AM]: actually, it's not. It's a percentage.
[10:13:52 AM]: 25% of the load
Travis [10:14:03 AM]: No, it's not. 25 = 25cpu equivalent.
Brent [10:14:32 AM]: no, really, it is.
Travis [10:15:24 AM]: Brent, anything over 8.5 generates the "red exclamation mark" icon on the server status page
Brent [10:16:13 AM]: yes it doesn, but it doesn't mean there is an overload
Travis [10:17:06 AM]: ((BlueHost's Server Status page)) says, "2009-06-01 09:10:45: Box under heavy load -- you may experience degraded system performance"
Brent [10:17:39 AM]: i didn't say it wasn't under a heavy load. I was trying ot explain more of what that server cpu item means
Travis [10:18:25 AM]: from ((url)): "At this time of writing, red light is shown for the server loads where the numbers are 18.12 (8cpus). This means there are 18.12 processes in queue - which is over 2 times of CPU capacity."
Brent [10:18:49 AM]: that information is not correct, as we have modified the way our servers display the cpu.

[10:23:32 AM]: I apologize, but it seems you've stepped away. Due to other customers awaiting assistance I am going to have to end this chat. If you have additional questions, we are here for you at all times. Thank you for trying our Live Chat! If you have additional questions, many answers can be found through our Knowledgebase. If you have other issues arise please let us know over live chat or give our Ticket Center a try. Remember our World Class Support is just a click away!

So I'm wondering whether he was completely BS-ing me, or if BlueHost really did modify that output. (And if it's the latter, then why would 25% CPU usage bring the server to a slow crawl?)