[grahamedgecombe]

The old L5520 processors they are using have 4 cores with hyperthreading, so it appears as 8 to the OS - so they don't have to have changed the host machines to present 8 cores to the VMs.

[drzaiusapelord]

He's referring to the recent move to the Sandy Bridge E5-2670 processor. All linode customers have this, but it will require a reboot to activate it.