My prior post was from 2019, and under the hood, Check Point has been slowly eliminating single-thread bottlenecks in management, which limited the number of cores that could be effectively used. Examples include the single-threaded fwm process losing more and more responsibilities with each release, and the "scale-out" and multi-threading of the fwd process in R82; these two old processes were the biggest single-thread offenders.
The top-of-the-line 6000XL has 32 physical cores, and the new 7000UL has 56 physical cores, so that tells you right there if Check Point added that many cores, they feel like they can be used. So just based on that increase, I'd hazard a guess that an R82+ SMS would be able to actually use 20 if not 24 cores.
I also find it interesting that, for the newer Smart-1 700/7000 series, they are quoting not only the physical core count but also the number of threads when SMT is enabled (i.e., the 7000-UL is quoted as 56/112 cores). This is another indication of more multithreading in the newer software releases, which, very generally speaking, gain benefits from SMT, whereas single-thread bottlenecks do not.
However, I feel like this quoting of cores/threads for the 700/7000 models is a bit disingenuous, as it appears SMT is enabled by default on some 700/7000 models and not others, so they are bumping up the core counts in the spec sheet, but they can't be used because SMT is off on some models. In 2019, the recommendation was to leave SMT off for an SMS, which definitely made sense at the time. However I've asked here at CheckMates several times whether that recommendation still holds in 2026 for R82+, and I've gotten crickets each time. I assume the lack of response means "it depends", but it would be nice to know for sure in regards to an SMS implemented on open hardware/ESX.
The above discussion is just for an SMS, for Multi-Domain more cores are always going to be better especially if you have a lot of domains/CMAs, since each domain has it own separate instance of processes such as fwm/fwd that even if single-threaded can execute on separate cores in parallel.
New Book: "Max Power 2026" Coming Soon
Check Point Firewall Performance Optimization
