"4 cores" on GCE means 4 hyperthreads, or 2 physical cores. https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/machine-types https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/machine-t

"4 cores" on GCE means 4 hyperthreads, or 2 physical cores. https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/machine-types https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/machine-types > For the n1 series of machine types, a virtual CPU is implemented as a single hardware hyper-thread on a 2.6 GHz Intel Xeon E5 (Sandy Bridge), 2.5 GHz Intel Xeon E5 v2 (Ivy Bridge), 2.3 GHz Intel Xeon E5 v3 (Haswell), 2.2 GHz Intel Xeon E5 v4 (Broadwell), or 2.0 GHz Intel Skylake (Skylake).