The fall and rise of the Mono-socket Server

Why cores matter as much as sockets

Things are different on the desktop, but in the server room and in departmental applications we’ve become accustomed to multi-socket servers, fitted with two, four or more processor packages. It’s an approach that enables system designers to build powerful servers more cheaply and easily, but it’s also one that can cost users more in software licensing fees.

Now though, we are seeing the reappearance of mono-socket servers with just one processor chip, even at the high end and in the data centres of the hyperscale service providers. In this paper, we outline how new processor architectures allow today’s mono-socket servers to outperform the multi-socket servers of just a few years ago, and at the advantages organizations can find in going single-socket.

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