Licensing - Processors versus sockets versus cores

My Oracle Sales rep isn't picking up, and I'm losing my marbles trying to get a consistent answer to this question.

Re. Licensing and hardware support of Database 10g R2 - Standard Versus Enterprise.

I need to understand the maximum number of CPUs that Standard will support. I'm seeing CPUs, Processors, Cores and Sockets all batted about in the documentation, and it's unclear to me what the limitations are.

My server is 4 quad-core Intel CPUs. 16 cores total. I've seen the licensing doc that discusses the fact that Licensing of Oracle on such servers is calculated based on the total number of cores /2.

But: It's unclear to me how many cores the Standard software supports.

Note 271886.1 says that Standard maxes out at 4 'Processors'. Is that to be taken to mean physical sockets, or processor cores? A reference to a technote that makes this distinction would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

BD Received on Fri Aug 14 2009 - 12:35:20 CDT