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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.

52 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"?

    --
    http://www.bynarystudio.com
    1. Re:Per-core licensing? by iammani · · Score: 3, Informative

      Apparently per-core licensing is only for Windows Server, and not SQL Server.

    2. Re:Per-core licensing? by Bobartig · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Of course, don't expect that to last long considering how multi-core things are getting.

      --
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    3. Re:Per-core licensing? by MBGMorden · · Score: 3, Informative

      Microsoft hasn't. Some others have though. It gets complicated though. IBM for example uses "performance units" for some of it's software. Single core x86 machines are 50 units per core. Dual Core and Quad-Core x86 machines are 25 units per core - so going single to dual costs you nothing extra but single to quad doubles the software price. They also value some processors differently than others. Certain Sun processors for example are 35 units per core. You pay a certain amount per unit.

      In general though, I'm sure the software makers will catch on eventually. I specifically got a single quad core for my last SQL server to avoid a dual-cpu license (which is an extra $6k or so).

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    4. Re:Per-core licensing? by Anpheus · · Score: 2, Informative

      Huh? Windows Server is licensed:

      Standard and Enterprise: per server (motherboard?)
      Datacenter: per CPU socket

    5. Re:Per-core licensing? by johneee · · Score: 3, Informative

      The last time I priced out Oracle software it was $X per CPU for the first core on a physical package and then $X/2 for each core after that. So a 12 core CPU over 2X 6 core CPUS would basically save you half a CPU license. Which given Oracle's pricing, could be a whole heck of a lot.

      That was a few years back, so it may be different now.

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    6. Re:Per-core licensing? by Guspaz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Rendering both posts moot is the fact that the 12-core Opteron performs like a 6-core Xeon, meaning that licensing would be the same per-socket anyhow since you wouldn't be able to reduce the number of servers/processors any more than you already can.

    7. Re:Per-core licensing? by afidel · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nope, Server Standard and Enterprise are per system, Datacenter is per socket (not core). Enterprise allows for 4 additional OS images on the same hardware, datacenter allows unlimited.

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    8. Re:Per-core licensing? by afidel · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, on x86/x64 it's core count/2 for Oracle software licensed per CPU (no additional license is needed for the first core).

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    9. Re:Per-core licensing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      SQL Server licensing is per socket, unless it has changed in the past year. At my last job we were able to save a nice chunk of money by upgrading our SQL machine to single quad-cores instead of dual dual-cores.

    10. Re:Per-core licensing? by networkBoy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The fact that one can argue about it means it is too damn complex.

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    11. 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

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    12. Re:Per-core licensing? by Anpheus · · Score: 2, Informative

      SQL Server is per server and CAL (that is, you license your server and then buy 50 CALs for the end users) or per socket/CPU. My advice is to always use the latter option because multiplexing doesn't count as one use, so if your website uses SQL Server, you better have CALs for everyone that visits... or just license it by socket.

      The CAL model is probably on its way out, it just doesn't make sense that if you have a public facing website that hits the database for authentication, even if you only have 50 real users, you still have over three billion potential users that you need to license.

    13. Re:Per-core licensing? by symbolset · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, it's a reflection of the differing architectures. The 6-core Intel processor has about 50% higher clock speed and the new hyperthreading while not perfect, really does improve performance on virtualized workloads. So net, performance should be roughly the same for most things even though one has six cores and the other has 12. And released at the same time. What a coincidence. Each of course has its strong points.

      One strong point of the Intel CPU is that you can run the cheaper VSphere Standard edition with six cores, and hyperthreads don't count. From Seven to twelve cores per CPU you need the more expensive Advanced or Enterprise Plus.

      Nehalem-EX coming up has up to 8 cores though so we'll have the question again in a few months. To stay at parity AMD will have to ramp their clock. They can't bump the cores to 16 because that falls afoul of VMWare.

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    14. 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.

    15. Re:Per-core licensing? by cerberusss · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Which given Oracle's pricing, could be a whole heck of a lot.

      I once heard a VP saying something like the following: "Today, the Oracle salesguy is coming to wrap up the licensing. I've cleared my complete schedule for today for the negotiations. It's worth it. I never save so much money on a day as when negotiating with Oracle."

      --
      8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
    16. Re:Per-core licensing? by cerberusss · · Score: 2, Informative

      To tell the truth, it was a 2.5 million euros license deal. So that's not really "wasting a day" on negotiations.

      --
      8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
    17. Re:Per-core licensing? by Anpheus · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, the end user or device is what is licensed when buying CALs from Microsoft.

      For example:

      You have a database application that is accessed by some users directly (query editor or application that directly talks to SQL server.) These users or the devices they use need to be licensed.

      You have a database application that a web server talks to, and through this, end users query your database indirectly (that is, when hitting the website, queries are generated indirectly to hit the database.) The end users, because they are still talking to the database albeit indirectly and causing queries to be performed will require CALs.

      Lastly, suppose you have a report generator application that creates only predetermined reports (nothing on-demand) at specified times and saves the data to a file (CSV, PDF, XLS, etc) or sends an email. This requires only one CAL regardless of how many people receive the output (the file) because only one user or device is directly or indirectly hitting the database.

      There's a real simple reason the licensing is like this, because otherwise what you could do is set up two SQL servers, one running SQL Server Enterprise (licensed by Server + 1 CAL as opposed to per processor, which is much more expensive) and one running SQL Server Express (free.) The Express instance would then have the Enterprise server as a linked server, and all queries would be redirected through that connection. This would effectively multiplex all of your users through one node. Microsoft doesn't want to allow this, so they've set it up so you can't.

      tl;dr: the webserver is not the end user, it is not generating queries on its own, but only on demand from end users. It is those end users that need to be licensed.

  2. Cry me a MS licensing costs river! by Rudeboy777 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Fair enough, but my Linux licensing costs won't change!

    --

    From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc

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

      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?

    2. Re:Cry me a MS licensing costs river! by rawler · · Score: 5, Interesting

      And the fee for linux is the cost of the admins -- the people who are good in the environment know they are good and their price goes up every year -- it takes about three years to become really proficient at most MS products - it might take half a year to really understand the linux environment and methodology if you are unfamiliar and then another 4 - 5 to gain that same profiencency equivalent.

      Interestingly, I work for a company where the IT-department is a pure Microsoft-shop. Only windows-hosting and almost only C#-development for internal applications. In the technology department however, we operate a bunch of production-system for our customers, running mostly CentOS Linux. Lately, I've discovered that the Linux-admin-staff often writes simple script-solutions with their left hand, with equivalent complexity to systems written by trained developer in the IT department. And even though I personally often would rather see a more structured systematic approach to some problems, when listening to the end-users they almost always perceive they've gotten BETTER support and reliability from those scripts.

      Point being that, a Linux-admin MAY cost a bit more than a windows-admin, and the learning-period might certainly be a bit longer, but I see much more productivity coming out of our Linux-crew than the windows-equivalent. More services hosted and administered per admin, and ~10 times the operational availability. Also, when more complex jobs needs being done (configuring network device, someone needs help with a tricky SQL query for a report, or needs someone to mirror a huge chunk of text-files into a searchable DB for performance), they usually come to the Linux-crew than the windows IS/IT.

      What I will give the person who goes the linux route is that once you are profiecient in Linux - gaining the same proficeincy in other systems is cake - basically because the they are just easier to use in the first place.

      Definitely matter of oppinion. Personally, I've never found anything "easy" about windows. Sure, the very limited amount of things you can do within three button-presses is usually simple enough (interestingly the same goes for modern Linux Desktops/Simple Server Setups). However, once something breaks, or you need/desire to stride outside the comfy gui-box, just forget about it. (IMHO) For example, a standard CentOS5 server install comes with high-availability software that from commercial vendors (IBM and HP, I don't know if Microsoft can even match the fully distributed transactional storage components) START at ~100K euro. For those money, I can let one high-school self-taught Linux hacker spend 2 years in researching and fine-tuning for the JUST the entrance fees of the proprietary variant. How would you estimate my chances of getting some more use out of that admin meanwhile?

    3. Re:Cry me a MS licensing costs river! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      SQL server is solid ... Oracle is just as good if not hands down better

      Oracle is hands down better - a lot better. But, you go way off into the weeds with stupidity and ignorance.

      robustness to their product lines how long will it take for postgress to catch them??

      Go read up about what's coming in PostgreSQL 9.0, which is right around the corner; plus its current feature set. Now go read about EnterpriseDB (commercial PostgreSQL offering). Not to mention, according to the FAA's (yes, that FAA) recent talk at PostgreSQL East Conference, PostgreSQL + PostGIS is roughly TWO ORDERS of magnitude faster than Oracle Spacial. Furthermore, recent benchmarks of Enterprise DB squarely pushes far into Oracle's warehousing territory; which also supports things like parallel load/query/indexing, etc. At the FAA, Oracle is being completely usurped by PostgreSQL. All new projects are to use PostgreSQL and/or PostGIS.

      PostgreSQL has shown that it easily out scales MySQL for most common loads and its performance now trounces it in most cases. Plus, PostgreSQL's query optimizer makes MySQL's look like a toy. Additionally, even as far back as 2007, PostgreSQL was typically on par with Oracle's performance and scalability. More recently, PostgreSQL is typically on par or exceeds Oracle in performance. When talking about spacial queries, clearly according to the FAA, Oracle isn't even playing in the same park as PostgreSQL. And if you need seriously high end enterprise performance, commercial PostgreSQL offerings, such as EnterpriseDB, is here too.

      So next time, before you start mindlessly mouthing off about open source catching up, you might want to put it into your head, its far more common for commercial needing to catch up with open source than the other way around; at least these days. Seriously, take a hard look at PostgreSQL. For the vast majority of users (small to medium size databases), MySQL, MSSQL, and Oracle shouldn't even be considered as PostgreSQL already has you covered. And frankly, MySQL isn't even in the same league as MSSQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.

    4. Re:Cry me a MS licensing costs river! by vadim_t · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Cry me a MS licensing costs river! by dudpixel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think you hit the nail on the head there.

      Linux is whatever you want it to be.
      Windows is whatever Microsoft wants it to be.

      --
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    6. Re:Cry me a MS licensing costs river! by mcrbids · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There's nothing that easy about MS technologies. They're superficially easy, sure. But there's quite a lot underneath that.

      Well, I certainly agree with you there! But what bothers me more about Windows technology isn't that it's as complex/powerful/intricate as comparable Linux technologies, as much as it's opaque.

      You get a binary to install, and there you go. Enjoy, and hope to God that somebody at the other end of the 800 tech support line has mercy on your poor, sorry soul. Because you have virtually no recourse otherwise.

      Compare/contrast with more open solutions, which provide options when the chips are down. How many times I've pined for a decent documented config file when rooting thru the menus to fix some obscure problem!

      --
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  3. I'm not sure about that by bigtomrodney · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Almost all of the enterprise software we buy charges by the CPU and by the seat. For this purpose a CPU core is the same thing as seperately socketed CPU. Whatever about OS savings I think you'd save more in hardware and running costs than you would on software.

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  4. Only until by aztektum · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oracle, MS and others change the licensing to require a charge per core.

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    1. Re:Only until by zero_out · · Score: 2, Interesting

      These companies will always protect their bottom line. It's an arms race of sorts. Increase power to cut down on the need for servers and licenses, and these companies will change their licensing models / costs to ensure that you are still paying the amount in the end. It's the same with HDDs and other hardware. The price/GB may go down, but the size of the drives just keep going up, ensuring that you still pay $100 to replace your parents' dead HDD, no matter the decade.

    2. Re:Only until by benthurston27 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've noticed this with LCD monitors at newegg.com. I bought a 21 inch lcd monitor for around $200 a year ago and now I can get a 23 inch for $200. But what I'd really like is a brand new 21 inch for less than $200 but no such luck, the minimum size available to buy keeps going up.

  5. What this says actually... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is that software licensing is a rip off to begin with.

  6. Opposite problem with Oracle licensing by pyite69 · · Score: 2, Informative

    They license per-core, so more cores per CPU can be more costly.

    1. Re:Opposite problem with Oracle licensing by BillyGee · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually Oracle charges per socket on Standard and Standard One licenses and per Core only on Enterprise licenses.

  7. ever heard of MySQL? by macbeth66 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why the heck is he paying anything? Just use MySql and be done with it. It is certainly easier to use/setup/maintain than that crappy SQL Server stuff. And it is free to boot! sheesh.

    1. Re:ever heard of MySQL? by WarwickRyan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sorry, MySQL isn't in the slightest comparible to MSSQL or Oracle. It doesn't have half the features, it's buggy, and it's generally slower. Tooling is also poor in comparison. It's still, unforunately, a toy.

      MySQL does well in the web. That's because it's free licence is suited to horizontal expansion - throw lots of cheap servers at it (where such expansion is possible). Tight integration with PHP just puts the icing on the cake. However, compared to other stacks it's poor. Both MSSQL/ASP.net and Oracle/Java-application-server perform significantly better (often factors) than the MySQL/PHP stack.

      So buying Microsoft/Oracle might seem expensive, that is often not the case.

      But the web isn't the world for databases. There are lots of other usages.

      MSSQL is for example is ideal for SMEs, you get a heck of a lot for your money - very well performing database with mature, well integrated and well performing stack. Plus a really nice BI implementation built right in, with nice easy GUIs for dummies / business users.

      Oracle's the daddy. It's complex but it's a more capable db than MSSQL. As a developer you have fine grain control over how the engine works. For certain enterprise applications it's the only real option (apart from going to IBM). I've been lead to believe that it's the performance king too.

      If you're serious about open source databases, then you need to use a serious open source database as an example. Both Ingres and PostgreSQL are mature, well performing and fully featured databases which are available under an open source license. They're what you should be comparing with SQL Server / Oracle. Not MySQL.

    2. Re:ever heard of MySQL? by Low+Ranked+Craig · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have an SME ERP background, and while all of what you say is correct, in my fairly extensive experience (since 1987) as a VAR and working on the inside at Sage, it is rare to run across a customer, at least in the mid-market ($5 to $50 million in revenues) that actually needs all the features of MSSQL. Hell, most of them do just fine with c-isam or btrieve style files. Most companies in this segment can do just fine with MySQL. Also, there are lots of tools out there. None quite as good as SQL Studio, I'll give you that, but Navicat, for example, is pretty good and affordable. My biggest issue with MySQL is what Oracle is going to do (or not do) with it...

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    3. Re:ever heard of MySQL? by ducomputergeek · · Score: 3, Informative

      We've had a lot of problems with MySQL, especially the InnoDB engine corrupting datatables. It got bad enough during development that after the proof of concept, we ported to PostgreSQL and have been running ever since. And it's been night and day. All our DB's are now postgres save for our billing system, which was written by a 3rd party. PostgreSQL is taking far more traffic than we expected and honestly we were thinking that we'd be needing DB2 or Oracle at this point, but so far PostgreSQL has handled all we've thrown at it and with the new clustering/replication/HA hot-standby features in PostgreSQL 9, it looks like we can put off that large purchase another year or so.

      --
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  8. SQL Server is CPU bound? by jandrese · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In my experience, it's rare for SQL Servers to be CPU bound, they're almost invariably IO bound, and having more cores won't help you when your disks are the bottleneck. I could see excitement over lowering per-machine costs for something like a renderfarm, but it doesn't seem likely to materialize for Databases.

    --

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    1. Re:SQL Server is CPU bound? by GodsMadClown · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yep, that's why you would like to cache as much in RAM as possible. AMD can help you there.

      http://it.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3784&p=15 ...
      The Opteron 6100 series offers up to 24 DIMMs slots, the Xeon is “limited” to 18. In many cases this allows the server buyer to achieve higher amount of memory with lower costs.

  9. Naming scheme... by Archaemic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    AMD released on Monday its 12-core chip code-named Magny-Cours

    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...

    1. Re:Naming scheme... by symbolset · · Score: 5, Informative

      AMD commercial server CPUs are named after Formula 1 racing tracks. Their server platforms are named for Ferrari facilities. Their desktop processors are named after stars, and the desktop platforms after constellations. Cite.

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  10. 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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  11. Software Licensing Costs? by turgid · · Score: 3, Funny

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

    --
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  12. Re:But will it run... by h4rr4r · · Score: 2, Informative

    Virtualization is a huge market for these cpus as well.

  13. Anand's review by jmichaelg · · Score: 4, Informative

    Anandtech has an excellent review of the new chip. The AMD chip is compared against the latest Xeon. In some situations such as OLTP and ERP, the AMD offering lives down to it's name Mangy Cores. In HTP and data-mining, Anandtech gives the nod to AMD.

    So choose depending on your needs.

  14. Re:But will it run... by McKing · · Score: 4, Informative

    Think VM (VmWare/Xen/Solaris Zones) instead of parallel applications...Multi-core CPUs are great for server consolidation. We went from a row of 10 full racks of Sun gear down to 10 T2+ blades + a SAN over the last 18 months. Database / webserver / Java app server, you name it, the T2+ handles it all!

    --
    If only "common" sense was actually that common...
  15. Do you have any evidence for this? by Colin+Smith · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Really? You mean, as computers get faster you *might* need fewer of them?

    No really. Please provide evidence for the thesis that as computers get faster, people need fewer of them.

    Second point. It's usually the I/O performance anyway. A 12 core server is unlikely to be able to push as much throughput as 3 quad cores, given the same I/O technology.
     

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  16. Re:oh geeze.... by WhatAmIDoingHere · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As computers get faster, software becomes more bloated and runs slower.

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  17. Re:But will it run... by symbolset · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One of the coolest things about this stuff is that inside of one dual-processor workstation you can set up a whole datacenter worth of VMs, and model how the pieces interact without fiddling with racks and cables. You can build up a redundant database, fileserver or iSCSI server solution (or all three!) and see how it handles failover and failback. The simulated clients that apply stress can be VMs in the same box. You can even float a cloud of routers and see how they handle various BGP commands. Pretty neat stuff.

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  18. Re:But will it run... by Bigjeff5 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since multi-threading is so hard to do right, most of what you are going to do is consolidation.

    So instead of having 6 separate servers, you just shove buttloads of RAM in a single server and set up a SAN for your data storage, and move all 6 servers to one box. You can even split it up further than that - if you have a couple servers that need to be separate from each other, but don't really need a lot of processing power, you can put those on a single core apiece. So you could potentially consolidate up to 12 servers into one box with virtual servers. More than likely you'll only get 6 or 8 out of it, because dual cores do help a lot, but still there's the potential to turn two racks of servers into one server and a SAN.

    You save on space, you save on energy, and you ultimately save on hardware (though SANs are expensive, so if you don't need the speed you could go to a standard NAS setup). To expand your data storage you just need to expand your SAN, so you can add servers and storage independently of each other. All of these are major up sides to going this route.

    Going from a 60 server setup to a 10 server setup has a massive potential for savings.

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  19. Advertisement by blair1q · · Score: 2, Funny

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

  20. Re:oh geeze.... by mikechant · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Time to render 30 minute Video CD image (at VHS resolution) on 1999 mid-high level PC (cost £1200): 10 hours approx, PC effectively unusable for other purposes.

    Time to render 2hr DVD image (at std DVD resolution) on 2008 low end PC (cost £350): 30 mins approx, PC also playing music/video, web browsing, ripping CDs etc. at the same time.

    The effect of 'bloat' is often overstated.

  21. Re:oh geeze.... by mikechant · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And if 100% of what was done with computers scaled like that, you'd have made a great point.

    Well, I think you've missed an important part of my point.

    What I described is a good illustration of a fairly common scenario - one fairly heavy task going on in the background and a variety of less demanding tasks in the foreground. Although other demanding background tasks would not have increased in speed as much as video rendering, the general principle holds good that with a cheap modern PC you can run something really demanding at the same time as using the PC for several other foreground purposes; going back a ten years this was largely impossible even with higher end machines. So bloat is not cancelling out hardware advances.