VMware takes dual-core licensing plunge

Microsoft has already done it. So have some others. They've decided to charge by the cpu socket, rather than by processor core count. With modern cpus, you can have more than one core running on a socket.

This is really only a common sense move. There are some notable holdouts, Oracle being chief among them, who are charging by the core. For a number of technical reasons, doubling the number of cores on a chip does not double the available computing power. It's not even close. Gains run from 55% to 80%, depending on a huge number of factors. Everyone's mileage will vary, and probably wildly so.

Eventually, there will have to be some further adjustments, as more and more cores are connected to a single socket. But for now, VMware, MS and others are doing what is only fair. The rest are looking more and more like price gougers and if they don't come around, they're likely to suffer in the image department or the bottom line or both. The market will enforce realism on pricing models, eventually. Until then, the best advice is to watch the fine print in those license agreements.

Jack