Demystifying Hardware - SQL Server 2012 Internals and Troubleshooting - page 45

2011 32nm 4200, 6200 Valencia, Interlagos

2013 32nm 4300, 6300 Seoul, Abu Dhabi

2014 28nm TBA TBA

SQL Server 2012 Core Factor Table
Looking at recent TPC-E benchmark submissions for both AMD and Intel processors, it is pretty
difi cult to avoid noticing how poorly the few tested AMD systems have done compared to the
latest Intel systems. For example, in January 2012, a new Hewlett-Packard TPC-E benchmark
submission showed a 1232.84 TpsE score for a two-socket AMD system with 32 physical cores,
compared to a 1284.14 TpsE score for a two-socket Intel system with 12 physical cores. Both of
these TPC-E benchmark submissions were on SQL Server 2008 R2. With these results, you would
be paying 2.66 times as much for SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition core licenses for the AMD
system compared to the Intel system (32 physical cores vs. 12 physical cores). This is rather dire
news for AMD, with their higher physical core counts and lower per physical core OLTP perfor-
mance compared to Intel.

Likely in response to this situation, on April 1, 2012, Microsoft released a new SQL Server 2012
Core Factor Table for AMD processors, which is shown in Table 2-5. Note that not all processors
are included in the table.

TABLE 2-5: SQL Server 2012 Core Factor Table for AMD Processors

PROCESSOR TYPE CORE FACTOR

All other AMD Processors 1

AMD 31XX, 32XX, 41XX, 42XX, 61XX, 62XX Series Processors with 6 or
more cores

0.75

Single-Core Processors 4

Dual-Core Processors 2

The most relevant part of this table regards the newer AMD 31XX, 32XX, 41XX, 42XX, 61XX,
and 62XX series of processors with six or more cores that have a core factor of 0.75. Having a core
factor of 0.75 means that you multiply the actual number of physical cores times the core factor
to arrive at the number of cores for SQL Server licensing purposes; for example, if you had a four-
socket server, where each socket was populated with an AMD Opteron 6284 SE processor. That
particular processor has 16 physical cores, so 4 times 16 would give you a result of 64 SQL Server
2012 core licenses that would be required for that server (before the Core Factor table was
introduced). Using the new licensing rules from the Core Factor table, you would be able to