Using taskset to set processor affinity

I have the following code in a bash script: echo "bash pid => $$"; echo "processor affinity before => $(taskset -p $$)" taskset -cp ${AN_INTEGER} $$ echo "processor affinity after => $(taskset -p $$)" I get this output: processor affinity before => pid 5047's current affinity mask: ff pid 5047's current affinity list: 0-7 pid 5047's new affinity list: 1 processor affinity after => pid 5047's current affinity mask: 2 does anyone know what this means? The reason I started messing with processor affinity is because I would launch multiple bash child processes, and all the bash child process affinities had the value "ff" so it seemed like they were all targeting the same CPU.