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Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

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brundolf·

LOL

Imagining an alternate timeline where they intentionally make you buy a separate license per-core

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Windows on early multi-cpu machines did, I think they still do for multiple physical cpus.

Afaik, Windows "Home" is limited to 1, "Professional" to 2 and "Pro for Workstations" to 4 CPUs.

Can be nicely tested with virtualization (e.g. KVM). Just assign multiple CPUs with one core each and Windows will only use the amount of "CPUs" that the license allows. A single CPU with a bazillion cores is no problem, though.

I only know this because I ran into that exact pitfall several times already.

Yes wasn't this an issue when the early benchmarks of the threadrippers came out? I think there was some kind of thread limit.

Apparently there was, and probably still is (process groups): https://www.anandtech.com/show/15483/amd-threadripper-3990x-...

And here's a table about hardware restrictions for Windows 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_editions#Comparison...

Looks like Windows 10 Pro is limited to 128 cores / threads per CPU. Guess I was a bit off with my "bazillion" remark above, but who with access to that kind of hardware would ever want to waste it on Windows anyway?

Seems so arbitrary and petty. But thankfully I like another OS that doesn't do this! :)

The process group thing isn't pettiness, it's an implementation flaw.

if Oracle made games

Typical licensing on server software.

that's exactly how is sold... Windows server had that model, and Windows for workstations too. it just bundled them in so you can't buy exactly 1:1

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