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AMD's 12-Core Chip Cuts Software Licensing Costs
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.
Very clever, AMD. Naming your chip after a location in Europe as usual, but this time making it able to be read as "Many-Cores" (or possibly more accurately "Many-Core", I don't really know how to pronounce French words). Very clever indeed...
but as you wait for knew advancement/ innovation to filter down to open source
I can do everything MLS does with open source technology and I could do it cheaper and faster and without worrying about retarded "per-core" licensing. As soon as someone uses the word "innovation" to replace "value" then you know they are talking out of their ass. Open Source servers are a SOLVED PROBLEM, one need only ask actual leading edge companies like Google, Facebook, and even Slashdot how they can handle millions and billions of users without expensive licenses for proprietary software.
the fee for linux is the cost of the admins
Yes because Windows admins are free. Can I have some of what you are smoking?
I think you're comparing apples to oranges.
Learning Windows as in basic usage and administration is easy. Learning the basics for Linux is quite easy too.
Actual deep knowledge of Active Directory, MSSQL, Exchange, etc is the Windows equivalent of a competent Linux admin, and those people want quite a lot of money as well. True, if you want a monkey that reformats boxes and replaces broken hardware and helps the users a bit, then they can probably be found cheaper for Windows. But that's not who you want to maintain your business critical Oracle server. Actually competent admins with knowledge of the details, good understanding of databases, and especially people like Oracle DBAs aren't going to be cheap, no matter the OS.
There's nothing that easy about MS technologies. They're superficially easy, sure. But there's quite a lot underneath that.