On: Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

[wtracy]

> Quad socket x86 is still prohibitively expensive

Is there an engineering reason for this, or is there just not enough volume for those boards to be economical?

[lazyjones → wtracy]

I'd vouch for the 3rd possibility: the prices are artificially high because the customers who buy these configurations can afford to pay the premium.

[ams6110 → lazyjones]

This. Purchasers of the highest-end and/or costly experimental architectures tend to be research institutions or national labs that are using grant money.

[wmf → ams6110]

In the case of quad-socket, it's actually enterprises running SQL databases and VMware consolidation where the cost of the software license exceeds the cost of the server.

[michaelt → ams6110]

Most corporations are happy to spend on the highest end hardware when it's cheaper than spending developer salary on performance.

[jlawer → wtracy]

I've been told its intel (Admittedly by my Dell Engineer).

The CPUs & Chipsets to run quad socket are marked up much higher then the dual / single socket options.