Does Avast NEED the sppsvc.exe service (Microsoft Software Protection Platform)?

Greetings,

Avast self-defense blocks me from using ‘Process Hacker’ (trustworthy - advanced Task Manager basically) to change “sppsvc.exe” service’s priority or from blocking it, disabling it from ever starting etc. I considered disabling Avast self-defense for a short duration (I’ve boot-scanned with ‘specialised’ definitions & high heuristics; used CCleaner and AdwCleaner) prior to disabling sppsvc.exe and then enabling self-defense again… But could this leave a gap in Avast’s defense (after re-enabling)? Does Avast rely on sppsvc.exe? If not I might temporarily disable self-defense, otherwise is there any other way to prevent the service from taking a third of my CPU incesantly?

Reason (if necessary):
So after updating windows and disabling sppsvc.exe via registry and in the services tab of Task Manager, it continues to start and begin taking up about 30% of my CPU every minute or so, fading away after some time but this has proven to be inconvenient. Not being able to terminate the process manually (in Administrator mode also) nor’ lowering its priority (Access denied dialog in Task Manager), I’m got ‘Process Hacker’ and tried to disable it / change priority etc only to discover that Avast self-defense blocks the act.

Kind Regards,
Augustas

sppsvc.exe is a Windows Service.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/startups/sppsvc.exe-25807.html