(1) Per core software licensing is one of the original sins of the commercial #hpc space. A licensing scheme from 1990’s when every server now is manycore and SoC improvements far outpace core gains. A CPU “Core” is ~as meaningless as a “CUDA core” on a GPU, to say nothing of...

(2).... X number of cores isn’t even the scalable unit of compute anyway. People buy/rent servers. Why is anyone charging by core? Do we sell cars by car seats? If we took out a 1/4 car seats would it cost 3/4 as much as it did before? If you charge your customers per core....

(3)...then you’re not really in the high performance computing business. You’re in the “holding back my customers’ potential perf because I can’t be bothered to make a remotely modern licensing scheme” business....

(4)....or the “I’m cool with causing perverse incentives at my customers’ data center that run counter to physics because, whatevs, we’re still getting paid” business