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Microsoft Won't Charge More for Multicore Licenses
esimp writes "According to technewsworld:
'As servers with dual-core processors come closer to hitting the market, Microsoft announced today it will not base its per-processor software licensing charges on the number of cores in a chip, sticking to the traditional price per processor, regardless of its number of cores." Update: 10/20 00:37 GMT by T : One of the identical links to TechNewsWorld's story has now been deleted.
Is today April 1?
Who actually monitors the 'daddypants' account anyway? I know the number of times I've bothered to report errors has been greater than the number of replies I've got or number of errors fixed (ie. none)
Anyway, um, lovely that Microsoft aren't charging for multicore licenses. I'm still amazed they even charge for SMP licenses.
Join the Free Software Foundation
Maybe MS thinks they can't really argue processor = core. Well, actually they can if they wanted to.
But more seriously, is it a sign that MS has more benefits from this arrangement?
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
I bet debian does not charge more either. Oh hell I am willing to go out on a limb and suggest that Red Hat will probably not either.
Got Code?
That story on technewsworld is very similar indeed to the story on technewsworld.
There's a similar story at... excatly the same location.
Of course not, like everything else is becoming more virtualized. What if someone has 1 xeon counting as 2 processors running windows. Then they install vmware to install many windows OSes for testing. is that still 1 CPU? No lawyer can move at the pace of engineers!!!
Microsoft did the same thing with Hyperthreading, where under WindowsXP the number of physical processors determined if you needed to run Home or Professional. Previously, under Win2k if you had a dual HT machine, Win2k saw the machine as a quad processor and forced you to install advanced server to get the full performance. Under WinXP, you only need Professional (or home if you have a single processor).
In other news, computer manufacturers report sales of multi processor single core machines are down, while customers are clamoring for multi core single processor machines.
MS is expected to revise it's statement tomorrow.
-Adam
what about hard-core?
Major US Company with virtual monopoly on product decides not to screw over customers. Details to follow.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Nevertheless, software vendors have proceeded cautiously on the core question, with rivals IBM, Oracle, Sun, Microsoft and others waiting to see how the others approach the issue, partly to learn what works and partly to have the opportunity to counter, according to DiDio.
:)
Good to see that atleast MS is brave enough to go ahead and do what they will. As much as I do not like their policies, atleast they didn't sit around waiting for others to show the way.
She said IBM is in a different situation since it makes money not only from software and services but also from hardware.
Ofcourse! This would mean that IBM would take up a position that hurt's Microsoft's stance
Should prove interesting.
While this seems like good news, I suspect after multi core server become common (or sooner) it will cost more per processor to license these applications.
-Frank
It's just common sense. Imagine if Ford built a twin-engine car and the government wants to charge twice the road tax....
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Admit it, we Penguinistas are dissapointed :)
Good this means I risk a little bit less when I pirate their software on a multi-core processor.
Of course, the copyright threats have yet to deter me anyhow....
What is a multi core processor?
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
So why don't I just take a bunch of processors, link them together, and claim it is all one processor with multiple cores, and force Microsoft to set its price down to the single processor price???
After all, a multi-core processor is really just multiple processors in one package, isn't it?
--
./Amiga/.
Video Production Support
...that they would even think they could charge more just because of improvements to underlying silicon architecture. An Athlon 64 3500+ provides performance equivalent to about $10,000 or so Intel 8086 logic chips and the 8086 chip *was* the chip that launched Microsoft. Since MS-DOS 1.0 sold for about $100, maybe we should all be paying $1,000,000 a copy to run MS-DOS 1.0 on the Athlon 64. Windows XP would cost more, of course.
I heard that Linux will charge TWICE the current amount as much for Multicore GPL licenses. :)
Not charging per core, whew, thus reducing our enterprise's total cost of operation!
"...will base the pricing on the number of processors the operating system shows present in the machine"
It is a processor that has multiple cores!
Perhaps they could reimburse everyone for all the time spent weeding out worms and viruses. Nah, that would make a "profit center" into a money loser as well as customer loser.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/19/2 257248
You insensitive clod, I run dos on a P4!
Awwwww, thats mighty nice of them, must getting soft in their old age :P
Indeed. Microsoft invented this. The good thing about mainframes was no matter how powerful the machine the cost for software was the same...
http://nsk.wikinerds.org/blog/index.php?p=74
Do morons still use .Not and Windoze
There will be something in the hardware that shows that it is a multi-core processor. Of course you can probably bypass this is override/hack it in the OS - but then this is about licensing, if you wanted to do that you might as well pirate a version which lets you use dual processors or whatever.
who should we thank for such favors...
and will they reverse the decision when multicore CPUs become more common?
Seems MS flip flopped a few times on Win XP service pack 2 eing available and enabled for people with pirate copies of that OS. I'm sure other changes can be found especially looking at the changes in licensing MS Office over the years.
Film at 11.
You daft bugger! Wasn't it obvious? They're both on the same core!
Anyway, um, lovely that Microsoft aren't charging for multicore licenses. I'm still amazed they even charge for SMP licenses.
Discount on bugs donchaknow.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Of course, with every version of RH 7.3, 8, 9... or FC1 or 2, I've never had to pay anyone for any number of CPU's I use.
Maybe since M$ can't lower their pride enough to lower their prices, not adding an extra fee is supposed to make them look better?
I can only wonder how Oracle is going to re-act to my 4-way, dual core RH ES 3 server... somehow I see the costs increasing...
...not engines, but axles.
Many toll roads charge by the axle. So if you have three (ie, you're towing a trailer or you have a big truck) they charge you more.
Uhm, you do realize that IBM, Sun, SGI, pretty much every big unix vendor will also scale OS costs per CPU? I know its fun to knock microsoft, but at least be rational about it.
General Motors has decided to charge the same price whether you drive on two or four lane highways.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
With multicore, the CPUs are sharing a single memory bus. At the two-core level, this isn't too much of a performance hit, but by the time you hit four cores, you lose most of the benefit of that fourth core to the lack of memory bandwidth.
Intel's Xeon chips are running into this problem already. A single Xeon CPU has better memory performance than a single Opteron, but a four-way Opteron system, with a separate memory controller and RAM bank for each chip, blows away a four-way Xeon system, since the four Xeons have to share the memory controller and memory.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
in other news, Microsoft is switching to a per-transistor licensing scheme.
What's strange about this announcement is the inconsistency in the policy. They do charge for multiple licenses when there are multiple processors in a single server. What they have announced is that if Intel or AMD put two (or more) CPU cores in one chip, a server that uses one of those chips will only need a single license. However, if I take multiple CPU's and imbed them in epoxy and make a server out of it, and call it the "frovingslosh processor", they would want to charge me or my customers multiple licenses based on the number of CPU's in that. Where is that consistency in that? Is it even legal? (OK, I know Microsoft is above the law, but would it be legal for anyone else?)
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
A sigh of relief rose from the collective pirates of the world, who realized they would not have to spend the extra half-hour hacking Microsoft OS activation for machines with multi-core processors and could instead catch a Simpsons rerun.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Rid the world of the Anonymous Coward.
since my multi-proc machines run Debian or Red Hat anyways.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Microsoft said it won't charge for dual core ... BUT they never said it would ACTUALLY use both cores ....
:)
... then again, how many M$ products can you name that DO work ?
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Microsoft Announced they will start charging per Level 1 Cache bank.
...selling you licenses based on the number of CPU sockets you are using! Yes, this is a secret strategy that MS came up with years ago. It's the dreaded 'Proc socket tax'! Everybody now...
NO PROC SOCKET TAXATION WITH LINUXIZATION!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Exactly. Packages are arbitrary, cores are not.
They have 'commercial' licensing scheme for their enterprise server product...
Bet they have at the least thought about it.. "ooo, more money"
---- Booth was a patriot ----
+5 'Trustworthy' Computing
I'd expect that this has more to do with Intel than with Microsoft.
Intel has hit a brick wall. They're having a hard time increasing processor speeds. At some point, they'll realize that the best way to get a processing speed boost is to slap a second core in the processor and call it a Pentium 5 or Pentium 4 Ultra or something like that, and sell it in high end desktops like Alienware.
Guess what happens if Microsoft charges per core? Intel won't be too happy with them...
I'm sure that a part of the decision was not making Linux more attractive for low to mid end servers.
It's already less expensive than Windows, if they charge more for dual or quad cores, the will really jack up the Windows TCO.
Microsoft is a business, they want to make money. Sometimes you can make more money by selling things at a lower price.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
But microsoft is being smart and realized that 1) 1 proc 2 cores != 2 proc 1 core and 2) people will be happier upgrading their systems under this system.
But since it is about licensing, you could actually contact MSFT's licensing department and try to get them to acknowledge that the license you paid for covers your machine, and when/if it doesn't work, you can start filing defraud and antitrust suits up the wazoo.
Video Production Support
We knew this two weeks ago, but were under NDA.
How did the press not know? Somebody somewhere would have violated the NDAs.
MS is already being criticized that Windows is already too expensive. It is highly likely that multicore processors will hit the desktop market, and it would be bad for PR if Joe User found himself having to pay double because he has a dual core processor(even though he has no clue what a dual core processor really is).
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Dammit, and here I am paying $699 for *each* CPU! I feel like I'm being totally ripped off. Maybe I should ask SCO for a discount?
What they will do instead is castrate the lower priced version of Longhorn so it can only run three applications at one time.
Hello, anyone who thinks they won't "find a way around this" is fooling themselves OR trying to fool everyone else they've been paid to fool. If you believe this load of typical shit from MSFT, you deserve whatever kind of horrific disease you get on your hard disk.
Natural Selection.
Favors the people who remember what kind of shit a company (and the I-N-D-I-V-I-D-U-A-L-S) has been pulling their entire lifetime. At least, it does today; the Bush administration is working to skew Natural Selection to their favor...
computers and cars are different!
Doesn't this only affect those who actually pay for M$ OSs?
Update: 10/20 00:37 GMT by T: One of the identical links to TechNewsWorld's story has now been deleted.
Yes, but can you guess which one?
AFAIK, Windows doesn't have any difference in functionality no matter how many processors you run, it's all about speed. Why should I have to pay for 2 servers when I'm only running 1? Is this some kind of speed tax?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
... for now.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
And how many copies of legal Microsoft software do you own, and use? Thank you very much.
Doesn't most MS products actually charge per CAL/per user, or have some sort of hybrid "Pay $X for machine + x CAL's, and then $Y/CAL"
If that's the case, then there is virtually no difference!
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Win2k still thinks that theoretical CPU's count as a processor. When will they fix that licencing problem? Will my Win2k professional box now see 4 CPU's and tell me to purchase another version of windows?
I wonder how this will effect heat dissipation. If they are stacked on top of each other, seems the bottom one would get dreadfully hot, as the upper would act as an insulation to it.
Would all four cores share the same cache? If so, then don't you save on memory bandwidth requirements by not needing to do all that messy cache coherence stuff between separate processors?
The following sentence is true. The preceding sentence was false.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Slashdot readers today mourn the death of their longest standing member, Anonymous Coward. Loved ones say he was driven to suicide by repeated +1 Informative moderation. Cause of death was self-inflicted registration. His fortune of karma, mostly gained from posting the full text of articles from slashdotted servers, is held up in court as no legal will was on record.
I suspect they are directly targeting Oracle's decision to treat each core as a separate processor for licensing costs. MS intends to further grab market share away from Oracle, and that's it. Oracle will soon have to relent on its greedy licensing practices, or they will slowly but surely find themselves about equally as relevant in the database market as Informix has become.
Paying more for an OS used on a multiple processor box would be like paying more for gas because you have an 8 cylinder engine instead of a 4 cylinder.
Totally STUPID!
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!
Of course, the 4-way Intel mobo is much cheaper to build than the Opteron's, which is the main reason for the shared bus.
I'm not sure where you get your information, but last time i checked win 2k pro allowed 2 proc, win 2k server allowed 4 proc and win 2k advanced server allowed 8 proc....So going on that you do NOT need to install ADVANCED server for quad processor boxes. You would have to install server though.
Linux Works
I'm not sure where you get your information, but last time i checked win 2k pro allowed 2 proc, win 2k server allowed 4 proc http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/server/evalua tion/business/overview/datasheet.asp
and win 2k advanced server allowed 8 proc http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/advancedserve r/evaluation/business/overview/datasheet.asp ....So going on that you do NOT need to install ADVANCED server for quad processor boxes. You would have to install server though.
(sorry for poor links do a seach on pages for '4' or '8' respectivly.
Linux Works
It has already been announced that first-generation x86-compatible multiple-core processors will not have shared cache.
It's probably going to take yet another process shrink before we get more than two cores per chip, at least when talking about P4 (or P-M) or Hammer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A four cylinder powerplant typically uses less fuel than an eight cylinder one, everything else being close to equal. That said, eight cylinder powerplants also drag cars along at a quicker pace, so you do get _something_ for your money...
So yeah, in the case of that, you are paying more for fuel. It's just not in the per-gallon metric; it's in the per-mile metric.
Iain
Debian Won't Charge Either! :P
Seriously, there are alternatives where you don't have to worry about "License to Use" and where there is only "License" in the strict sense of the word, which you don't have to accept and which only gives you more rights if you need them, rights which are otherwise prohibitted by law. I think it is it important to mention especially during such discussions when most of people might not realize that there are alternatives to proprietary software and how do they work legally and economically.
It's not Microsoft's fault you can't run an up-to-date AV client. So you want to pirate software and blame them when you get a virus? Why is this about Microsoft and not about you again?
This is about Microsoft's retarded system of charging people money for every dinky thing they do. A multi-core processor machine is next to wasted running M$'s stupid single user software. What's the point of using such a thing for a single person's Word processing? Because of that, M$'s seemingly generous policy of not charging an additional rape fee per processor looks worthless. Oh, sure, someone can say that it would be nice to run "server" with it but that is always the wrong tool for the job.
Oh yeah, Debian does not need an Anti-Virus program, unless it's filtering email for Windoze crippled computers. Running software that others want you to run and share can hardly be called pirating. Things are so much easier when you use software that's not owned by a bunch of assholes like Microsoft. I'm not directly annoyed by virus run computers. My clients are and everyone else has to bear the cost of the spam and other malice their boxes spew.
Keep it coming AC, that's much better stuff than the usual nasty that your Astroturfing buddies like to throw at me.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
In other words, we will make our display match what we think you should pay. We count it as one, see here when you click this tab? We made it say "1 processor" so that's what we will charge you today. What a freaking non-statement.
Windoze, the single user stupid, on a multicore computer, what a waste!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
One of the benefits [to software developers, at least] of a directory, like M$FT's Active Directory [or Novell's NDS] was supposed to be the ability to sell software by the seat - Active Directory would keep a record of how many users accessed the SQLServer each month [in both directions - data entry in, and data analysis/data mining out], and would bill accordingly.
I guess they [the would-be "cheaters"] must get around this in the "out" direction by running all their analysis each night as one great big batch file under a single user account. Still, you'd think that the "in" direction would tend to balance things.
Anyway, the idea of per-seat pricing really appealed to me - I always figured that what each seat chose to use the license for was up to the seat-ee.
...that they will provide Linux FREE irrespective of how many processors and cores you run it on!
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Slashdot poster Anonymous Coward was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
That's a pure load of BS. I used to work in the mainframe industry designing cpus as well as OS software. Our licensing model was similar to the rest of the industry - you pay per performance. You could get a fast CPU but the OS is throttled until you enter a license key that says you can run at 100% performance.
Mainframes were all about variable licensing cost - not just per cpu but also PER CYCLE.
'nuff said
Performance per core
1 core 100%
2 core 170%
3 core 240%
4 core 320%
I've seen proposed roadmaps for 8 cores but they quickly become bus bound.
Specialty dual cores 1 processor the other either another instruction set processor, PCI bus, SCSI, DSP, encryption will be a nice niche.
But I feel deep shame for getting +5 informative on something so obvious. Almost as shameful as the mods who modded up such an obvious attempt at karma whoring. lol
Rest In Peace
A.C.
Probably the will do that for charging :-)
from those evil money-loving fiends from Microsoft. Well, you've done it again Bill Gates & Co. I hope you're happy, leveraging your Monopoly power to charge more for new technology... oh, what's that... they're not going to charge more? Damn them and there attempts to drive Linux out of the market by dumping their OS on the market!
Current UK Road Tax is based upon engine size. My under-600cc Smart is charged ~£70, a 1.3l car is charged ~£120. and over 2l is charged more again.
(Figures from memory).
If you have a dual-engine, i would imagine they would combine them to come up with a total charge.
e.g. putting two of my under-600cc engines in one car would make it liable for the over-1.1L tax.
b3 4phr41d 0f my 4bov3-4v3r4g3 c0mpu73r kn0wI3dg3!
MadDwarf
Where did the practice of charging per CPU come from? Afterall, even if it has four processors, it's still ONE system, and is running ONE copy of the OS in ONE bank of RAM.
You can't really do more on a multi-CPU system; you can just do what you're already doing faster, since there's more CPU's to handle running processes.
So what's the deal?
-Z
No, the PC market (Windows, Netware, Notes etc.) had a different licensing policy (per seat) and all you're doing is supporting my point - Microsoft are not making up new licensing schemes, they're just moving towards a licensing system that's more appropriate to the kind of distributed server-based architectures they're now pushing for.
Would you prefer they'd jumped straight to per cycle??...
Yes, we all know that linux is free... the problem is that support and operators / developers cost. So running a linux server is most definately not free.
You can't run a server OS (or any other software come to that) without support in a 'proper' company.
Rumor is that Longhorn will require Dual Core 4-6 Ghz processor. With Intel announcing they are up against the wall at 3.8 Ghz (No 4.0 Ghz plans), and the dual cores will be underclocked due to heat issues, Microsoft had to do this or else face a serious roadblock($$$) to Longhorn adoption.
Have you noticed that trucks pay more on thruways than cars?
One thing that has to be a bit clear is that hyerthreading is not the same thing as multicore processor is.
Hyperthreading is essentially (I might be a bit off and oversimplifying here) a processor that has two logical components which are capable of processing independant tasks (threads) in parallel. However vast majority of processor components are still shared (L1 cache for instance).
If we're talking about multicore processor that then means that you take multiple processors and put them in one casing which has one set of pins that connect them to system. Some of the components are still shared (L2 or L3 cache for instance) but now we're actually talking about completely separate units.
From that perspective it would actually make a lot od sense for any SW vendor that has licencing based on the ammount of processors to start counting ammount of cores as opposed to ammount of sockets.
There are a few snags, though:
1. I'm guessing here but I think that (at least for current SW) it's really difficult to distinguish between hyperthreading and multicore system, which would probably make any SW-based licence enforcing difficult.
2. More importantly, however, there's a small issue of actual performance gains.
If the SW vendors would want to charge multicore systems same as multiprocessor ones then performance would have to be same also. That, of course, is not the case.
In case you're wandering why most of Intel-based platforms don't have more than 8 processors (there are some not-terribly-popular exceptions) the reason is following. In Intel platform one of the main performance inhibitors (in mutiprocessing system) is processor bus. I'm not talking about the speed of the bus. I'm talking about the fact that mutiple processors are sharing it. And when one of them is talking to the memory then others have to wait. This problem can be diminished by larger ammounts of L2 or L3 (depending on processor version) cache. Larger ammount of cache will typically mean less need of going to main memory. But because of having a need to maintain knowledge of which processor modified what data in its own cache we usually run into a problem of too much cache-coherency overhead on the bus, in addition to normal processor communication.
As it turns out practicall performance limit seems to be at about 4 processors per bus. 8 processor systems typically use 2 busses that talk with memory and I/O subsystem through a switch and systems that have more than 8 processors expand on that even more.
Anyway. Multicore processor still has that L2 or L3 cache shared. Which means that is cannot perform equivalently the same as would two independent processors, each with its own cache.
Of course there are also other issues but that's one of them, for sure.
Well, ok, but could they still have high-bandwidth inter-core busses, to take care of all the messy cache coherence traffic, so as to still save on external memory bus traffic?
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