Oracle standard edition has no multi-core licensing restrictions

Reading this in hemant’s blog from last June, he made an interesting observation:

1. Oracle has priced for the Xeon QuadCore Processor at the rate of 1 Processor based on
the single socket justified as “When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name, a processor is counted equivalent to an occupied socket” for a 3-year licence. Thus, Oracle used the combination of “Processor, not Core” for SE/SE-One and 50% of List price for a 3-Year Licence.

The Oracle store website’s licensing page has the exact same wording.

This means that, with SE/SEOne, you can really stretch your Oracle licensing dollar: an 8-way box with a pair of quad-core processors can be licensed with SEOne (in the US) for $10k, and $2k/year for support (sold on a per-chip basis too).

Now imagine running it on an 80-core chip!