[AssKoala]

Originally Posted by Belisarius

From those statements, all your techincal discussion followed. I assumed (reasonably) that all your techincal comments were based off the assumption that the licensing was the same as the technical specs. I requested (twice) for clarification - had you simply said "Yes, I've seen dual CPU-Usage on an XP Home box" or pointed to an article talking about it, I would have said "Hmm, learn something new every day".

I fail to see how that was a reasonable assumption. Based on the technical discussion, XP Home would not be able to use more than a single core.

Regardless of that, I stated exactly what I just said a total of three times, including my last post.

Originally Posted by AssKoala's first response

However, Microsoft licenses Windows XP and greater on a "per-socket" level. That means if I have a 64 processor system but its all on one socket (e.g. multi-core), then Windows XP Home's licensing will support it just fine

Originally Posted by AssKoala's second response

No, like I said, Windows is licensed on a "per-socket" basis. Windows XP Pro supports two "sockets".

That is, it sees dual-cores as two processors, but they are only 1 socket. So as far as Windows XP is concerned, if you have a Dual Core processor, to the kernel you have two processors to the licensing you have one.

Originally Posted by Belisarius

As to RedHat, IBM, et all, first off, why is it "important" to note that (because it felt like you were trying to make some sort of point)? The impression you gave off was that RedHat, IBM and others were somehow behind the curve to Mircosoft in regards to multi-core licensing. When I saw you included RedHat in that list, it piqued my interest, so I did do a google search, and turned up that very same article about Oracle as you did. I had also found this article that indicated that RedHat had a licensing model that treated dual-core processors as a single processor from *before* the launch of dual-core chips (as did IBM - and this article indicates RedHat had that model *before* Microsoft adopted it). So, rather than simply be an ass and throw your argument back in your face, making some snide comments about learning how to google before making such odd statements, I was simply going to ask for documentation. Because who knows, I might have missed something and ended up looking like a fool.

You actually got me there. I had originally read that IBM and RedHat were going with per core models initially (though I recall that being on theinq).

I said "it's important to note" not because it's backwards in any way (really, it's backwards to license on a per socket model, this will likely change as processors head towards the 16 core models Intel has on their roadmaps), but because I felt it important to note that not all vendors use a per-socket model.