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Per core licensing is pretty dumb, especially considering commodity systems now have 32, 64, or more cores, and server cores vary widely in capabilities. Per c

Per core licensing is pretty dumb, especially considering commodity systems now have 32, 64, or more cores, and server cores vary widely in capabilities. Per core maybe made a tiny bit of sense when a server was one or two cores. But that era's long gone.

bee_rider 3y ago
Also it is a bizarre unit to break things up over. Actually, how do per-core programs account for things like SMT? What about Bulldozer? Can I get a discount license if I only run it on an “efficiency” core? And we won’t even get into GPUs… What next? Let’s charge users based on how many instructions they have in flight for our application. These ILP cheaters have been mooching off the rest of us for ages!
- ghaff 3y ago
  It made a lot more sense back in the day. Then a slot of things switched to per-socket.
- wmf 3y ago
  Oracle and IBM have detailed pricing tables with dozens of cases like "one mainframe core is worth three Intel cores". But then you negotiate the price anyway so it seems kind of pointless.
bombcar 3y ago
Cloud, for better or worse, seems to be sold in vCPUs (read: cores), RAM (gigglebites), and disk. I wish there was a much better way to compare vCPUs than just "count" because one core of some five year old server is not the same as a core of a modern performance beast.
- wmf 3y ago
  It's not like they charge the same price for a current gen vCPU as a five-year-old vCPU. The benefit of self-service is that you can benchmark it yourself.
nyrikki 3y ago
IMHO per socket was extractive most of the time, especially when memory capacity was the limit on performance. The 'Oracle doesn't have customers, it has hostages' The main purpose shifted from a hypothetical development cost offset to an effort to extract more fees from customers who were locked into your product. Broadcom's changes to VMware, where they have publicly stated that increasing revenue while not attempting to build new revenue streams or through any value adds for the customers is happening now. I get that any technology moves to an extraction phase after growth slows. But for me, moves like per core licenses are an indicator we need to consider vendor mitigation. Unfortunately capital markets seem to prefer these lower long term but predictable gains through extraction vs long term dividends etc...

bee_rider 3y ago

Also it is a bizarre unit to break things up over. Actually, how do per-core programs account for things like SMT? What about Bulldozer? Can I get a discount license if I only run it on an “efficiency” core? And we won’t even get into GPUs… What next? Let’s charge users based on how many instructions they have in flight for our application. These ILP cheaters have been mooching off the rest of us for ages!

ghaff 3y ago
It made a lot more sense back in the day. Then a slot of things switched to per-socket.
wmf 3y ago
Oracle and IBM have detailed pricing tables with dozens of cases like "one mainframe core is worth three Intel cores". But then you negotiate the price anyway so it seems kind of pointless.

bombcar 3y ago

Cloud, for better or worse, seems to be sold in vCPUs (read: cores), RAM (gigglebites), and disk. I wish there was a much better way to compare vCPUs than just "count" because one core of some five year old server is not the same as a core of a modern performance beast.

wmf 3y ago
It's not like they charge the same price for a current gen vCPU as a five-year-old vCPU. The benefit of self-service is that you can benchmark it yourself.

nyrikki 3y ago

IMHO per socket was extractive most of the time, especially when memory capacity was the limit on performance. The 'Oracle doesn't have customers, it has hostages' The main purpose shifted from a hypothetical development cost offset to an effort to extract more fees from customers who were locked into your product. Broadcom's changes to VMware, where they have publicly stated that increasing revenue while not attempting to build new revenue streams or through any value adds for the customers is happening now. I get that any technology moves to an extraction phase after growth slows. But for me, moves like per core licenses are an indicator we need to consider vendor mitigation. Unfortunately capital markets seem to prefer these lower long term but predictable gains through extraction vs long term dividends etc...