diff --git a/src/cpu_topo.c b/src/cpu_topo.c
index 374efe923..ffca19ea2 100644
--- a/src/cpu_topo.c
+++ b/src/cpu_topo.c
@@ -422,7 +422,8 @@ static int cpu_topo_get_maxcpus(void)
 void cpu_fixup_topology(void)
 {
 	struct hap_cpuset cpuset;
-	int cpu;
+	int cpu, cpu2;
+	int curr_id, prev_id;
 	int min_id, neg;
 
 	/* fill the package id, node id and thread_id. First we'll build a bitmap
@@ -504,6 +505,49 @@ void cpu_fixup_topology(void)
 		if (ha_cpu_topo[cpu].capa < 0)
 			ha_cpu_topo[cpu].capa = (ha_cpu_topo[cpu].th_cnt > 1) ? 100 : 50;
 	}
+
+	/* First, on some machines, L3 is not reported. But some also don't
+	 * have L3.  However, no L3 when there are more than 2 L2 is quite
+	 * unheard of, and while we don't really care about firing 2 groups for
+	 * 2 L2, we'd rather avoid this if there are 8! In this case we'll add
+	 * an L3 instance to fix the situation.
+	 */
+	cpu_reorder_by_locality(ha_cpu_topo, cpu_topo_maxcpus);
+
+	prev_id = -2; // make sure it cannot match even unassigned ones
+	curr_id = -1;
+	for (cpu = cpu2 = 0; cpu <= cpu_topo_lastcpu; cpu++) {
+		if (ha_cpu_topo[cpu].ca_id[3] >= 0)
+			continue;
+
+		/* L3 not assigned, count L2 instances */
+		if (!cpu ||
+		    (ha_cpu_topo[cpu].pk_id != ha_cpu_topo[cpu-1].pk_id) ||
+		    (ha_cpu_topo[cpu].no_id != ha_cpu_topo[cpu-1].no_id) ||
+		    (ha_cpu_topo[cpu].ca_id[4] != ha_cpu_topo[cpu-1].ca_id[4])) {
+			curr_id = 0;
+			prev_id = -2;
+			cpu2 = cpu;
+		}
+		else if (ha_cpu_topo[cpu].ca_id[2] != prev_id) {
+			curr_id++;
+			if (curr_id >= 2) {
+				/* let's assign L3 id to zero for all those.
+				 * We can go till the end since we'll just skip
+				 * them on next passes above.
+				 */
+				for (; cpu2 <= cpu_topo_lastcpu; cpu2++) {
+					if (ha_cpu_topo[cpu2].ca_id[3] < 0 &&
+					    ha_cpu_topo[cpu2].pk_id == ha_cpu_topo[cpu].pk_id &&
+					    ha_cpu_topo[cpu2].no_id == ha_cpu_topo[cpu].no_id &&
+					    ha_cpu_topo[cpu2].ca_id[4] == ha_cpu_topo[cpu].ca_id[4])
+						ha_cpu_topo[cpu2].ca_id[3] = 0;
+				}
+			}
+		}
+	}
+
+	cpu_reorder_by_index(ha_cpu_topo, cpu_topo_maxcpus);
 }
 
 /* This function is responsible for composing clusters based on existing info