Core pinning, also known as CPU affinity, is a performance technique that binds specific software processes or threads to designated CPU cores. By assigning work to a particular core, one can reduce unnecessary context switching and improve cache locality. This can also lead to more predictable latency and, for some workloads, higher throughput

Modern operating systems are designed to dynamically distribute processes and threads across available CPU cores to balance the overall system load. While generally effective, this can introduce variability for diverse workloads. Core pinning addresses this problem by binding specific processes or threads to a designated CPU core. This offers two primary performance advantages:

• Enhanced Cache Locality: By staying on one core, a thread's data and instructions are more likely to remain in that core's fast cache memory, reducing slower access to main memory.
• Reduced Context Switching Overhead: Preventing threads from migrating between cores minimizes the CPU cycles spent saving and restoring a thread's state, freeing up resources for actual computation.

Core pinning primarily benefits applications requiring consistence performance and isolation, such as high-performance computing, embedded systems, low-latency platforms, and multi-threaded applications like databases, network servers, and virtual machines. Tools like taskset (Linux), numactl, and OS-specific APIs enable developers to implement core pinning effectively.

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