Re: tough choices

>
> No it didn't publish based upon 3ghz machines in 2001, but it did
> publish based upon the following formula:
> - intel based: $1 / mhz / cpu
> - risc based: $0.67 / mhz / cpu
>
> At the time I was mostly specing out sun risc boxes - around 450 mhz
> to 800 mhz IIRC. You could I assume get an intel 1 ghz machine at
> that time. If that same licensing was being used today, then yes -
> the cost would be $300k / CPU for a 3 ghz server.
>

 > At the time I was mostly specing out sun risc boxes - around 450 mhz
 > to 800 mhz IIRC.  You could I assume get an intel 1 ghz machine at
 > that time.  If that same licensing was being used today, then yes -
 > the cost would be $300k / CPU for a 3 ghz server.

You have your figures slightly mixed up - based on these, your 800 Mhz boxes would have only cost $301-$536 per CPU. Similary, using the same numbers, the licence for a 3 Ghz Intel Processor would today be $3000.

You are infact referring to UPU pricing, where a "power unit" was defined as 1Mhz of power in an Intel-compatible, or 0.67Mhz in a Risc processor. The actual cost per power unit, however, was not a dollar :-)

> The only reason that this pricing scheme was dropped in late 2001 was
> due to a noticable drop in sales growth. I'm sure that it'll be back
> if Oracle ever gets as confident as it was in 2000

Actually, the biggest reason it was dropped was that UPU was simply unworkable given the rapid differences in clock speeds at the time. So indeed, it was the imminent arrival of the faster CPUs (with a corresponding wider spread in prices between the different hardware vendors) that prompted the change. Received on Wed Jun 23 2004 - 00:29:39 CDT