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"The most common big server used in a data center is a two-CPU system with a lot of memory and, hopefully, some fast I/O devices inside such as a 10-100G network card and fast flash storage"

This made me go check on the date of the article. Two CPUs? But I suppose for CDN servers that makes sense, they're simply big caches.

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Presumably the article is meaning two CPU sockets, rather than two cores?

Clearly. The cores also have a bus connecting one another, but the differences in IO the article mentions don't apply there.

2 sockets can allow a server to hold 32 or more cores, and a 2 socket server uses 1U of space. Going to 4 or more sockets typically requires 2 or even 4 Us of space, so they’re less efficient space-wise.

Most people dealing with hardware don’t refer to “CPUs” anymore, because there’s a lot of confusion around sockets, cores, and hyperthreads, so it’s better to be more specific in any conversation.

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