Until now, Oracle was one of the last major holdouts in recognizing that multi-core computing is expensive for enterprises when software makers charge users per core.
Most major software vendors already treat multi-core chips as a single processor.
Yet, while Oracle has now rejigged its pricing policy, the company continues to charge multi-core chip users a premium.
Oracle said it would discuss its new pricing in a conference call today, but declined comment in the meantime.
On its web site yesterday, Oracle said customers would now be charged a multiple of 0.75 per processor core, rounded up to a whole number.
For example, a multi-core chip with 11 cores would be charged a 9-processor license (11 multiplied by 0.75 equals 8.25, which would be rounded up to 9).
For Oracle Standard Edition One or Standard Edition licenses on servers that use just one dual-core processor, customers would be charged a one-processor license.
Not so for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition whereby a dual-processor computer would be charged a two-processor license.
While Oracle’s new pricing is an improvement to its previous pay-by-the-processor-no-matter-what stance, it still lags the policies of most other major software companies.
Microsoft Corp last year said it would treat dual-core chips as a single processor. Others, including Novell and Sun, also charge a single processor license fees for a multi-core chip.
Since dual-core desktop and notebook computers are not yet prolific, not all software companies have taken a stand on how they will price their wares with regard to multiple processor cores. And Oracle is not alone. BEA Systems Inc charges a 25% premium for its software that runs on multi-core processors.
IBM also continues to treats each core of its IBM Power chips as a single processor. But, at least IBM in April changed its licensing model so that dual-core chips from Advanced Micro Devices and Intel Corp are treated as a single chip.
For Oracle and, to a lesser degree, IBM, the issue of how best to charge of multi-core chips is set to intensify.
Chipmakers have made it clear that multi-core processors are the way they can deliver better computing power without overheating machines.
They are working, slowly but surely, to introduce dual-core desktops and notebooks into the enterprise. Intel, which has been a laggard in introducing dual-core technology, has promised twin-core business machines for next year. Dual-core trailblazer AMD, during its recent analyst conference in New York, spoke in future terms of as many as 16 cores.
Oracle’s new prices may just be a stop-gap measure until multi-core machines become mainstream, which likely would happen by 2007. Otherwise its revenue stands to take a hit if rivals offer customers a cheaper licensing path.
While multi-core machines deliver super-charged performance, giving software users more bang for their buck, it seems arbitrary for software vendors to a premium.
After all, clock speed used to be the benchmark of getting more performance out of a processor and software companies have never charged on a per-Ghz basis.
There has to be a new way of classifying software value, said Graham Lovell, Sun’s senior director of x64 servers, network systems group told ComputerWire in a recent interview.
