No additional cost for dual-core processors

NEW DELHI: Following the footsteps of software makers Novell, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, Microsoft has confirmed its decision of not imposing additional software license fee for dual-processor systems. Said an online report.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel will launch machines with dual-core processors in early 2005.

Database giant Oracle has stated that it will license a dual-core processor as two separate CPUs. However, Microsoft's server software will be licensed on the basis of logical processors rather than physical processors present in a system. Microsoft's decision may also make Oracle rethink about its decision, however there is no such assurance from Oracle, till now.

The software buyers are happy with this announcement, as they can get significant performance gains at no extra cost.

This sequence of events indicates that cost of software is an important factor amongst software buyers, also open source software has another advantage over proprietary ones as cost in its case depends only on the hardware.