AstralWanderer said:
"...the top-performing firewalls are now expanding into areas like system, process and registry control..."
Good god man, that is not at all what a firewall should be doing.
All it should do is monitor and shape TCP and UDP packets according to a defined set of rules... Talk about feature bloat. The only way a firewall should "expand" is by more expressive rule language, or covering IPv6 packets...
"...the point I was making was that security software can benefit from an extra core."
That point is mistaken though; good security software that does its job properly, and doesn't try to include the kitchen sink, has a minimal footprint. No background processes should necessitate the need for a whole CPU core...