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AMD's 12-Core Chip Cuts Software Licensing Costs

Posted by Soulskill on from the fewer-boxes-fewer-problems dept.

CWmike writes "AMD released on Monday its 12-core chip code-named Magny-Cours, doubling the number of cores over the previous-generation Opteron chip. While a doubling of performance is nice, another key benefit delivered by a chip with a dozen cores may be in reducing software costs. For Matt Lavallee, director of technology at MLS Property Information Network, a company that supplies real estate data, upgrading to the 12-core Opteron chip from his current quad-core chips will allow him to cut the number of servers — and his software licensing fees. While the 12-core chip costs a little more than an eight-core chip, it's 'nowhere near as much as a SQL server costs,' said Lavallee, who has been beta-testing the new chips. MLS operates 60 servers, and Lavallee said he could theoretically cut the number of servers by half but will likely reduce his server count by a third with the chip upgrade." Reader adeelershad82 adds that AMD is hoping the new Opterons will compete with Intel in the high-volume server market.

7 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Per-core licensing? by bynary · · Score: 4, Funny

    Has MS updated their licensing to be "per-core" instead of "per-CPU"?

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    http://www.bynarystudio.com
    1. Re:Per-core licensing? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Actually Oracle licensing is based on a simple formula of:

      (Number of cores * scaling based on how good the cores are + bytes of RAM / salesman's commission + number of users / number of ginger people in your organisation) + sqrt(-2) * phase of the moon

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      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    2. Re:Per-core licensing? by Calinous · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yes, this is similar to a situation when you need to use a semi and deal with all the Dept of Transportation stuff, instead of using a bycicle.
            Oracle has things that Postgresql lacks, and in some cases Postgresql (and maybe even corporate software like MS SQL Server) can not take Oracle's place.

  2. My licenses by SnarfQuest · · Score: 3, Funny

    Will I need to buy more SCO licenses for this one chip? This could get expensive.

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    Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
  3. Software Licensing Costs? by turgid · · Score: 3, Funny

    What are these? Is this something that afflicts Windows people still?

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    Stick Men
  4. Advertisement by blair1q · · Score: 2, Funny

    Someone needs to put "Advertisement" at the top and bottom of these posts of PR copy.

  5. Re:Cry me a MS licensing costs river! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I c wat u did thar