Software industrial process control, such as motors and let robotics. The longer latencies make the control loop less responsive or unstable. Microseconds granularity is very useful there.
a friend of mine recently told me how Windows schedules cpu-bound threads to different cores to prevent thermal throttling, so I now wonder if we were mucking things up by running our CPUs too hot
If you weren't pegging thermal max you shouldn't be seeing thermal limiting. Although you're probably right that cooling is something software people are more likely overlook than SRE/hardware/lab folks.