Cron is job scheduling mechanism in Unix-based operating systems. It depends on your hosting if you have access to it.
Since WordPress needs to run some tasks periodically it has own PHP-based mechanism called WP-Cron that is both used by core and accessible to plugins.
Basically OS cron is more reliable, WP-Cron is more compatible.
Automatic updates most likely refers to plugin using WP-Cron.
How much this might be issue with hosting depends on:
- hosting policy for background processes
- hosting CPU quotas (and bandwidth quotas if they are low enough and you poll often enough)
- amount and rate of updates you perform
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