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• October 20, 2004 •
Microsoft yesterday announced its decision on how the company will license server software on new servers with multicore processors expected in the market next year. Microsoft software that is currently licensed on a per-processor model will continue to be licensed per processor, not per core, for hardware that contains dual-core and multicore processors. This policy applies to several products in the Windows Server System™ family, including Microsoft® SQL Server™ , Microsoft BizTalk® Server and others. Microsoft is approaching this decision with the goal of driving high volume and high value to standards-based computing through logical licensing and more cost-effective adoption of multicore processors.
Licensing on a per-processor rather than a per-core basis ensures that customers will not face additional software licensing requirements or incur additional fees when they choose to adopt multi-core processor technology.
"Our customers want to understand software costs as they evaluate the return on investment of new technologies, such as multicore processors," said Brent Callinicos, corporate vice president of Worldwide Licensing and Pricing at Microsoft. "Working alongside hardware and chip partners, Microsoft is leading the way for customers of all sizes to take advantage of multicore technology so they can adopt the advances of industry-standards-based computing into the enterprise."
In the past few years, the chip manufacturers have started to design chips with more than one processing unit ("core") on the chip in an effort to boost performance. For software running on these dual-core systems, chips appear to be two separate processors, raising the question of whether they should require two software licenses. Different companies have taken a different approach. Oracle Corp for example treats dual-core processors as two separate processors, while Red Hat Inc. treats single & dual core processors as a single processor.
Microsoft's announcement may put pressure on software vendors like Oracle to adopt a similar approach, because Microsoft's solutions will be more cost-effective on multi-core processors.
AMD was the first manufacturer in the industry to demonstrate an x86 dual-core processor for 32- and 64-bit computing on August 31, 2004. According to AMD, dual-core AMD Opteron™ processors for servers and workstations will launch in mid-2005 followed by dual-core processors for the client market in late 2005.
Intel expects to ship its first multicore chip, a dual core Xeon processor, in the first quarter of 2006.
More information about Microsoft's licensing policy can be found on the Microsoft Volume Licensing Web site.
