So, since IOS XR is based on QNX, the SHOW PROCESSES command is a bit different then you would see in IOS. In IOS XR, you can actually query processes and see what is going on.
Here is a way to see what BGP is doing :
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:R2#sh processes bgp
Tue Apr 24 01:23:06.343 UTC
Job Id: 1039
PID: 2941214
Executable path: /disk0/iosxr-routing-4.1.2/bin/bgp
Instance #: 1
Version ID: 00.00.0000
Respawn: ON
Respawn count: 4
Max. spawns per minute: 12
Last started: Tue Apr 10 05:31:26 2012
Process state: Run
Package state: Normal
Started on config: ipc/gl/ip-bgp/meta/speaker/default
core: MAINMEM
Max. core: 0
Placement: Placeable
startup_path: /pkg/startup/bgp.startup
Ready: 0.338s
Available: 25.582s
Process cpu time: 63.719 user, 1.074 kernel, 64.793 total
JID TID CPU Stack pri state TimeInState HR:MM:SS:MSEC NAME
1039 1 1 312K 10 Receive 0:01:01:0795 0:00:00:0249 bgp
1039 2 1 312K 10 Receive 331:51:39:0224 0:00:00:0000 bgp
1039 3 0 312K 10 Receive 331:51:39:0223 0:00:00:0001 bgp
1039 4 1 312K 10 Sigwaitinfo 331:51:39:0129 0:00:00:0000 bgp
1039 5 0 312K 10 Receive 0:00:01:0764 0:00:00:0005 bgp
1039 6 1 312K 10 Receive 0:00:01:0760 0:00:00:0016 bgp
1039 7 0 312K 10 Receive 0:00:23:0239 0:00:02:0242 bgp
1039 8 0 312K 10 Receive 0:00:03:0321 0:00:02:0280 bgp

1039 9 1 312K 10 Receive 0:01:01:0796 0:00:00:0005 bgp
1039 10 1 312K 10 Receive 0:00:01:0786 0:00:00:0008 bgp
1039 11 0 312K 10 Receive 0:00:01:0786 0:00:00:0004 bgp
1039 12 0 312K 10 Receive 0:00:01:0786 0:00:00:0001 bgp
1039 13 1 312K 10 Receive 0:00:02:0861 0:00:00:0006 bgp
1039 14 1 312K 10 Receive 0:00:03:0189 0:00:59:0750 bgp
1039 15 0 312K 10 Receive 0:00:01:0816 0:00:00:0223 bgp
1039 16 1 312K 10 Receive 331:51:39:0047 0:00:00:0000 bgp
1039 17 1 312K 10 Receive 0:00:27:0039 0:00:00:0000 bgp
1039 18 1 312K 10 Receive 75:14:02:0621 0:00:00:0002 bgp

Now, since IOS XR is based on a flavor of Unix, we have a command similar to TOP called monitor processes.
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:R2#monitor processes
Tue Apr 24 01:27:41.959 UTC
Computing times…
(Screen Clears and the following data is refreshed)
287 processes; 1320 threads; 1086 timers, 6265 channels, 8489 fds
CPU states: 99.6% idle, 0.2% user, 0.1% kernel
Memory: 4096M total, 2762M avail, page size 4K
JID TIDS Chans FDs Tmrs MEM HH:MM:SS CPU NAME
1 13 291 204 1 0 998:56:18 0.12% procnto-600-smp-instr
65744 1 1 11 0 1M 0:00:00 0.09% ptop
340 2 16 20 4 340K 0:41:16 0.05% sc
60 15 44 20 7 4M 0:18:05 0.04% eth_server
95 22 276 35 4 924K 0:02:03 0.00% sysmgr
152 4 16 24 6 700K 0:00:08 0.00% canb-server
71 2 7 11 1 236K 0:00:04 0.00% mdio_sup
202 9 39 62 14 1M 0:00:03 0.00% ether_ctrl_mgmt
89 1 6 3 1 104K 0:00:55 0.00% serdrvr
355 4 9 15 2 260K 0:00:00 0.00% ssm_process
Yup, another quick one!