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Before moving to a quad-core processor, take a look at the software licensing schemes for your enterprise applications.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) plans to unleash its native quad-core
chip later this year; and Intel is pushing to make quad-core the
standard processor for all servers, since the underlying platforms are
the same as dual-core, as is the micro-architecture, said Jerry Braun,
product manager for Intel Inc.'s Xeon processors.
Before moving to a quad-core processor, take a look at the software licensing schemes for your enterprise applications.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) plans to unleash its native quad-core
chip later this year; and Intel is pushing to make quad-core the
standard processor for all servers, since the underlying platforms are
the same as dual-core, as is the micro-architecture, said Jerry Braun,
product manager for Intel Inc.'s Xeon processors.
Heavy workloads from the use of virtualization, Java,
expansive databases and enterprise resource planning (ERP)
applications, for example, see the most significant performance
improvements when going from dual-core to quad-core processors, said
Bob Burroughs, Intel's performance marketing manager.
"Workload performance improves 50% to 75% when using quad-core compared to dual core," Burroughs said.
Note that doubling the number of cores on a processor does not double
the performance of the chip. On a multicore chip, the cores need to
talk to one another, limiting performance, and applications don't
always take full advantage of the underlying processing power, an AMD
spokesperson explained.
Nevertheless, "from a pricing standpoint, there is no reason not to go to quad-core," said Intel's Braun.
But while the price may be right for the quad-core chip, some software licenses aren't.
Software licensing and multicore processors
Some software vendors evolved their licensing models when
multicore chips came into the picture and continue to do so while
others kept it simple.
When processors went from single to dual core, Microsoft made
the decision to keep its licensing on the processor level, and the
company plans to maintain that model in the quad-core era and beyond,
said Microsoft representative Maureen Holm.
BEA Systems Inc., an enterprise infrastructure software provider, also
licenses per processor, but plan to change the way it charges for
licensing over the next couple of months, said BEA representative Kelly
Clarke. "We are exploring other alternatives to better support
virtualized and multicore environments. We are still working out
details and are not at a place just yet to discuss," Clarke said.
Intel spokesman Nick Knuppfer said the majority of software vendors
license per socket, so going from a dual-core to a quad-core processor
shouldn't affect software licensing in most cases. "From our
perspective, charging per socket is the way to do it, and we definitely
expressed our opinion about that (to vendors)," Knuppfer said.
AMD's stance on licensing is that users should be able to purchase one
software license per processor, regardless of whether the processor is
single core, dual core or quad-core, said AMD spokesman Scott Malish.
"This customer-centric licensing approach will help facilitate the
broad adoption of multicore technology, enabling users to easily and
economically migrate to multicore computing," AMD stated.
Other software industry vendors that license per processor
include Novell, Red Hat, VMware and Sun. It should be noted that VMware
defines a processor as a single physical chip that contains no more
than four processor cores, but that it will revisit its licensing
policies as x86 processors with more cores become available.
Software licensing gets complicated
For all the software vendors that license per processor, there
are exceptions, like Oracle. Oracle has one of the more complicated
licensing setups, recognizing each core as a separate processor. The
company amended the definition of processor when counting multicore
chips and how many licenses are required.
Oracle has four categories for licensing, and each category has a
unique processor factor that is used to determine the total number of
processor licenses. For instance, the processor factor for the
UltraSPARC T1 is 0.25. To determine how many licenses are required,
Oracle multiplies that number by the number of cores. A Sun Fire T2000
server with one 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC T1 processor and eight cores
requires two licenses (eight multiplied by a processor factor of .25
totals two processor licenses).
Processor factors for AMD and Intel chips are 0.50, so a
Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) ProLiant DL145 G2 with two AMD Opteron 200
series dual-core processors will require two multiplied by two
multiplied by a 0.5 processor factor, totaling two processor licenses
with a list license fee of $80,000. All other multicore chips, like
Sun's UltraSPARC IV, have a 0.75 processor factor, and single core
chips have a processor factor of 1.0.
In February, the software company did simplify its licensing
for Oracle Standard Edition and Standard Edition One products, so
customers can run systems with as many as four processors with no limit
on the number of cores.
Under this model, a customer with a server that has four
quad-core processors no longer has to buy licenses for each of the 16
cores to run the top-end Enterprise Edition, as was previously
required. They can now buy licenses for the four sockets and run
Standard Edition, cutting list licensing prices from between $320,000
and $480,000 -- depending on Oracle adjustments that factor in
multicore processor performance -- to $60,000, said Nicole Maloney,
Zeno Group for Oracle.
IBM value units
IBM's approach is among the most complex. In the third quarter
of 2006, IBM software group announced a replacement for its
processor-based pricing and introduced the concept of value unit (VU)
pricing. Prior to this announcement, customers added up the number of
processing cores on which they planned to deploy their database
management software (DB2) and multiplied by the price.
But with the introduction of multicore processors, the industry has
begun questioning what a processor actually is. IBM believes a
processor should be defined as a core, so a processor with two cores
(dual-core chip) requires two licenses.
The company developed its VU methodology to standardize the value
derived from various processor architectures, normalize the benefits
and translate that into how much to charge for software. With
multicores, each core is considered a processor, but not all processors
require the same number of processor VUs.
To determine the number of processor VU entitlements required for a specific implementation of a product, IBM refers to its pocessor value unit table.
"IBM charges license fees based on performance because there isn't
always a correlation between the number of cores on a chip and
performance. It makes the most sense to do it this way," said IBM
spokesman Jeff Tieszen.
The processor VU of a given product cannot be exchanged,
interchanged or aggregated with processor VU entitlements of another
product. For example, before the VU metric, a dual-core AMD processor
required one license for DB2 software because its performance benefits
were about 30% -- not double the performance of a single-core
processor.
The IBM VU table shows that a server with one dual-core AMD
processor requires 100 VUs -- or 50 VUs per core. If you have a server
that has two dual-core AMD processors, then you are required to buy 200
VUs of your DB2 software: two processors x (50 VUs x two cores) equals
200 VUs.
The faster performing dual-core Power5 processor yields more
performance than an AMD-based dual-core processor, so it has a higher
VU. If you have a server that has two dual-core Power5 processors, then
you require 400 VUs of DB2 (100 VUs x four cores equals 400 VUs) --
twice as many VUs as the AMD dual-core example in the previous
paragraph.
Confused yet?
Licensing could get more complicated as processor technology
advances, but that probably won't happen for a while. At least, in
technology time anyway.
"I think we are going to see a slow down in the adding of cores as the
software industry catches up and becomes more available," said Braun
said. "We've gone from single to dual to quad-core in about a year's
time. Now we'll see improvements in architectures and power
consumption."
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