Intel plans to launch its first dual-core processor in the second quarter of this year, in the shape of the Pentium Processor Extreme Edition. This will be followed by Montecito, a forthcoming dual-core version of its Itanium server chip, and future multicore versions of Pentiums, Xeons and Itaniums that will have up to 32 cores each. But hardware vendors are worried that traditional models for software licences will restrict the take-up of their multicore offerings.
The problem, they say, is that as more logic cores are squeezed into each chip the software licences will increase in cost accordingly -- but out of all proportion to the cost of the hardware.
"Oracle is probably the most misaligned," said Intel enterprise marketing manager Shannon Poulin, in a briefing with journalists on Thursday. "They have focused on licensing by core, but we’re trying hard to have them see things the way we do."
HP, which has been involved in the development of the Itanium processor since the beginning and which recently transferred 250 chip designers to Intel, is also piling the pressure on Oracle, according to Peter Kraft, HP's director of business critical systems.
"We have meetings twice year with our biggest customers," said Kraft. "These meetings last almost a week, and we invite people from Intel, Oracle and so on. The question that comes up in every meeting to Oracle is 'when will you change licensing scheme?"
Although the common plea to Oracle regards virtualisation, said Kraft, the company's multicore strategy is also a cause for concern. "The processor is not a fixed entity any more as it was, the world’s changing, and Oracle has to change with it," said Kraft, who believes Oracle will eventually rethink its licensing scheme.
Oracle does not see it that way, however. In an emailed statement Oracle's Jacqueline Woods said "We don't have a position with respect to dual-core processors. A core is equal to a CPU, and all cores are required to be licensed. Therefore, if you have a dual-core processor, you are required to have two processor licences. A core is equal to a CPU, and all cores are required to be licensed."
Woods said Oracle has no plans to change its licensing strategy. "We have not increased our prices. At the end of the day, the consumption of the Oracle software is unchanged."
Oracle is not the only software company alarming the hardware vendors. Intel's Shannon pointed to BEA as another software company that does not yet see software licensing on dual core systems the same way as Intel does. "BEA is an in-betweener," he said. "They’re talking about licensing on the basis of 1.25 times [the price of a licence on a single-core CPU] rather than two times." But, he added, Intel has "thousands of engineers sitting at these companies to make sure that their licensing works for customers."
BEA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
And Microsoft still has some way to go in the eyes of the hardware vendors, particularly in on-demand computing where processors are switched on -- and paid for -- according to workload.
"If you buy box with 32 processors, you can pay HP only for what you use but you still have to buy 32 full licences from Microsoft and Oracle," said Intel's Kraft. "This might change in the future, but there are so many licensing schemes available now, that it is really confusing for the customer."
Talkback
Its a very childish argument Oracle has put. This dispute can be resolved in a very simpl way i.e. If the PID Processor ID will remain same through all cores then we should call it one CPU single/undividable. since cores cannot be removed/added in CPU, therefore one cannot borow someone's CPU core for a while hence opening a concern of missuse or cores working on different Motherboards etc.
I agree with Muhammad. Oracle, BEA, and Microsoft are trying to justify padding their profit margins while stating that they're only sticking to their previous license agreements with customers.
I believe that if these software companies wish to stick to their current business model, each processor package should be regarded as one CPU, regardless of how many cores are on the die. Since AMD and Intel are having significant difficulty increasing clock rates up to and beyond 10 GHz, this is the next logical step until manufacturing technology can catch up with the current state of processor design. I have no doubt that we will see 10 and 100 GHz processors, but probably not within the next 10 years. Software companies that try to pull this kind of stunt will do nothing but make themselves look bad and upset their customers.
How easy is it to write an application that will *never* use more than a given number of CPU cores, no matter how many CPU cores are available? Because this could be one solution, providing your OS-of-choice supports it. Because no customer is going to take a compulsory 100% (or more) price rise lying down. Of course, Oracle's database would then perform a lot less well on the same hardware than another database from a more "enlightened" vendor... Let the marketing people wrestle with that one instead, eh?