What are these processes?

[James McDonald]

Michael Hipp wrote:
> Anyone have any idea what these "3" might be?
>
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  8116 root      20   0  3180  740  636 R 33.2  0.0   1683:15 3
>  8267 root      20   0  3180  740  636 R 33.2  0.0   1677:59 3
> 23476 root      20   0  3180  744  636 R 32.9  0.0 334:25.58 3
> 12887 michael   20   0  2416 1160  876 R  0.3  0.0   0:00.29 top
>
> The system was running painfully slow. After I rebooted they do not 
> seem to have reappeared.
Anyone else spot the irony... 3 running processes named 3.... using 1/3 
each of the CPU