BBW with MachineKit seems really slow/sluggish

I'm noticing simple commands (e.g. "ls") take a moment before returning. top shows

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
    8 root -2 0 0 0 0 S 61.7 0.0 3:52.47 ktimersoftd+

ktimersoftd+ is using a lot of CPU. I haven't done anything other than boot this and turn off the SoftAp. I haven't explicitly run any MachineKit code (dunno what runs out of the box).

There's a thread (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/machinekit/RrNLUo4ASP4) on the MachineKit list that talks about rtapi:0 using a lot of CPU.

I'm waiting for another BBB to arrive to try it on that, especially since I want Ethernet on this thing.

But is this normal or expected?