Blog: William McKnight

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Oracle implements multicore chip licensing

Late last year, just before the holidays, Oracle announced it would treat core licensing differently than it has in the past - and more in line with competitors Microsoft and IBM.

Specifically, it will apply a multiple (less than 1) to the number of cores to determine the equivalent processor number for licensing purposes. These multiples appear to be .25 for UltraSparc T1, .5 for AMD/Intel and .75 for other multicore chip servers.

Oracle customers with these server technologies know that a core does not provide a processor level of service, so this pricing strategy should be viewed as more "fair" to these customers. If I recall right, chip makers went to dual- and multi-core strategies in order to more efficiently utilize fans and cooling because they run very hot.

Microsoft and IBM have been doing something similar to this with their DBMS pricing since early 2005.

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