In Linux kernel, the documentation for CONFIG_NUMA says:

Enable NUMA (Non Uniform Memory Access) support ... For 64-bit this is recommended if the system is Intel Core i7 (or later) ... 

I have an Intel Core i7 processor, but AFAICT it only has one NUMA node:

$ numactl --hardware available: 1 nodes (0) node 0 cpus: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 node 0 size: 16063 MB node 0 free: 15031 MB node distances: node 0 0: 10 

so what is the purpose of having CONFIG_NUMA=y, when i7 has only one numa node ?