1. A computing device having: a multi-core processor having a particular number M of executing cores, each core being a discrete logical processing entity capable of individually being assigned work; a multi-core application instantiated on the computing device and expecting a particular number N of executing cores to be present on the M-core processor, the N-core application thereby assigning a particular number N of application work portions; and a virtual machine instantiated on the M-core processor, the N-core application being instantiated on the virtual machine, the virtual machine emulating an N-core processor to the N-core application, and thereby hiding difference between the N cores expected by the application and the M cores available from the processor.