On an x86-based system, a CPU core (no hyperthreading enabled) or a CPU thread (hyperthreading enabled) within a core is presented as a physical CPU by the hypervisor or the bare metal operating system. vCPUs (virtual CPUs) are exposed to the guest virtual machine as CPUs: the guest schedules applications on these vCPUs, and the hypervisor schedules these vCPUs over the physical CPU cores or threads. All vCPUs from a guest are symmetrical. Oracle Linux KVM treats these equally, as long as scheduling parameters such as using CPU pinning have not changed.