I think workload might be as (if not more) the factor than the uniqueness of the topology itself for how much pinning matters. If your workload is purely comput

I think workload might be as (if not more) the factor than the uniqueness of the topology itself for how much pinning matters. If your workload is purely computationally limited then it doesn't matter. Same if it's actually I/O limited. If it's memory bandwidth limited then it depends on things like how much fits in per core cache vs shared cache vs going to RAM, and how is RAM actually fed to the cores. A really interesting niche is all of the performance considerations around the design/use of VPP (Vector Packet Processing) in the networking context. It's just one example of a single niche, but it can give a good idea of how both "changing the way the computation works" and "changing the locality and pinning" can come together at the same time. I forget the username but the person behind VPP is actually on HN often, and a pretty cool guy to chat with. Or, as vacuity put it, "there are no hard rules; use principles flexibly".