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    Yeah there are two parts to answering this question: CPU affinity allows one to code something that would make this a technical requirement in Windows, the alternative answer is realtime systems can very definitely require such things. +1 for being the only person to mention CPU affinity which is really the most likely culprit for what is being asked here. Commented Jan 7, 2015 at 17:24
  • 3
    What can go wrong if you set the affinity to current core? With preemptive multitasking the waiting thread will be scheduled unless current one has maximum possible priority ("realtime" in Windows). I'd see another scenario: each of the 4 threads are assigned statically-defined affinity of 1,2,4,8, in which case the latter two threads will never be scheduled (although I'm not sure if setting affinity to effective zero is going to succeed). Commented Jan 7, 2015 at 18:33
  • @Ruslan Maybe trying to set invalid affinity will crash the application in the first place? Commented Jan 8, 2015 at 16:29
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    @Luaan well that's not that risky operation to lead to crash. Maximum what I'd expect is an error returned by the OS. I've just checked, in Linux I get "Invalid argument" error. Don't know what Windows would say. Commented Jan 8, 2015 at 16:37
  • @Ruslan Every major OS for certainly over a decade has included code to avoid thread starvation (usually by boosting the priority of a thread after it hasn't run for long enough). Commented Jan 8, 2015 at 19:05