Introduction

On March 1, 2025, the latest Oracle Technology Price List was issued and we noted a modified definition of ¡®Processor¡¯. The changes specifically targets Oracle Standard Edition database customers (including SE2). The change may render existing installations on modern CPUs non-compliant with Oracle¡¯s licensing rules and could be an unexpected surprise if audited by Oracle.

What are Oracle trying to do ? Kill Oracle SE on-premise ? If you are not aware, the Standard Edition database is the same code as the Enterpise Edition database with some features disabled and a resource limiter configured to only allow a maximum of 16 threads at any one time. That is a massive amount of computing horsepower, and we have used this to advantage with our customers saving them millions of dollars in license fees to Oracle without compromising performance or security.

There is a solution to this, and we will delve into that later.

The Change

Within the latest Oracle Technology Global Price List dated March 1, 2025 (https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list-070617.pdf), the definition of ¡®Processor¡¯ on page 11 includes the following excerpt:

When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One, Standard Edition 2 or Standard Edition in the product name (with the exception of WebCenter Enterprise Capture Standard Edition, Java SE Support, Java SE Advanced, and Java SE Suite), a processor is counted equivalent to an occupied socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket.

Note that the emphasis is ours.

What is a Multi-Chip Module ?

Referred to as an MCM, MDM (Multi-Die Module) or Chiplet, it is a component of recent CPUs. As CPUs increase in core count, rather than manufacture in a monolithic single die, manufactures now produce in smaller modular components and combine together to form larger CPUs. For example, Intel "Sapphire Rapids"?Xeon CPUs have either 14 or 15-core chiplets, and four 15-core chiplets combine together to form a 60-core CPU known as the ?Intel? Xeon? Platinum 8490H Processor (Intel? Xeon? Platinum 8490H Processor Product Specifications). In the case of AMD, one example is the AMD EPYC? 9654 that has 12 chiplets of 8-cores each (AMD EPYC? 9654 Processor Product Page).

Oracle are now stating that each chiplet is considered the equivalent of an occupied socket for licensing an Oracle Standard Edition product as defined above. This means that a server that has a single CPU of an Intel? Xeon? Platinum 8490H Processor would be deemed to be occupying 4 sockets. Likewise, a server that has 2 CPUs of AMD EPYC? 9654 would be deemed to be occupying 24 sockets. This is a significant change that you need to note if you are a license owner of a qualifying Oracle Standard Edition product.

What is the Problem ?

The Oracle Database licensing document (https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/database-licensing-070584.pdf) states that Oracle Standard Edition cannot be installed on servers that have more than 2 CPU sockets, however this document clearly states that it provides guidelines regarding Oracle¡¯s policies in effect as of August 6^th, 2019 and that it may not be incorporated into a contract.

Oracle Standard Edition 2 FAQ page (https://www.oracle.com/database/technologies/standard-edition-2-faq.html) also states ¡°Oracle Database SE2 can be licensed on servers with a maximum of 2 sockets. However, the core counts per 2-socket server can increase over time without impacting customer license obligation. With Oracle Database SE2, customer license costs remain the same regardless of the number of cores in the socket.¡± But this is not a contract either.

Therefore it is very important that you understand the definitions within your Oracle Agreements and ordering documents. It is possible that Oracle may not be able to enforce this limit unless they can sight the necessary contractual language.

Whilst the restriction of CPU sockets may be murky, the requirement of how many sockets must be licensed is not. Clients of Oracle may think they are legally using 2 sockets of Oracle Standard Edition but when they migrate to a new modern server that contains CPUs of multiple MDMs, they will be vulnerable to Oracle¡¯s tactics of auditing and using non-compliance to leverage money, cloud services or both from you.

The Impact

Ignoring the maximum sockets allowed statements from Oracle, lets assume you currently have a server of 2 CPUs that is running an Intel 8490H Xeon processor. You have licensed the server with 2 Processors of Oracle Standard Edition. Oracle would state that you need 8 Processors for that server. That is a difference of US$128,100 not including any back-dated support that Oracle might request if you are audited. Whilst that is list price, Oracle has now vastly reduced its discounts, and being a Standard Edition customer, you are unlikely to attract a large discount.

More unexpected costs, and more time battling Oracle rather than focusing on business.

Mitigating the Problem

There are many ways to mitigate this problem, we have listed four realistic options:

1. Do not use Servers that have ¡®Sapphire Rapids¡¯ 4^th Gen Xeon CPUs with your Oracle Standard Edition; nor AMD EPYC 3^rd, 4^th or 5^th Gen CPUs nor IBM Power7+, Power9 and Power10 CPUs. Use older CPUs if that is a viable alternative.
2. Implement a compliant virtualisation and hard-pin to core counts equal to or less than the chiplet core count size, and do not choose CPU cores across chiplets. As Oracle Standard Edition databases are restricted to 16 threads, for Intel or AMD CPUs, you would want to maximise to 8 cores maximum per virtual machine that is hard-pinned to the core. For IBM, use LPARs with hard-pin assignments to a single chiplet.
3. Migrate to AWS or Oracle cloud services and use Standard Edition services where up to 16 vCPUs can be assigned.
4. Migrate to PostgreSQL. Robust open-source software with Enterprise support and no licensing quicksand.

Oracle would prefer you open your purse and change your licensing to Oracle Enterprise Edition or migrate to the Oracle Cloud. This recent insight reveals that Oracle licensing is a moving target; whilst the majority of movement in the past 5 years has been changes to Oracle Java SE, this recent change to Oracle Standard Edition shows that Oracle is always on the lookout to diminish the value of its lower-cost products and to push its clients onto its preferred products and platforms. Whether that is fair or moral does not help your current predicament if you are impacted by this change.

Using Virtualisation

One of the most likely solutions will be to use hard-pinning of virtual machines to CPU?cores. This can be achieved using Oracle Linux with the KVM?based Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager or the older Xen based virtualisation technology OVM?with Windows and other operating systems. The key is to pin CPU?cores within the same chiplet so that you only incur 1 Oracle Standard Edition Processor License (and this will determine the minimum NUPs you can license if you license by users) per chipset and potentially control how many Oracle Processor licenses you will require. Below is a simple example of pinning cores within a multi-die CPU that would be compliant with Oracle licensing requirements.

The above could for example be an AMD?EPYC?7702 which is a 32-Core CPU?consisting of 4 chiplets, each of 8-Cores each. Without the use of virtualisation, Oracle would either state that bare-metal usage would be not allowed or requires four Oracle SE?Processor licenses. The virtualisation illustrated above restricts this to a compliant usage of 2 Oracle SE?Processors. An additional observation is that the 8 cores is 16 threads which is the maximum threads used by the Oracle SE?database, therefore the virtual machines should be a minimum of 8-cores. VMs that have multiple databases should consider larger core counts, an alternative to the above illustration is to have a single VM?of 16 cores across 2 chipsets, still consuming 2 Oracle SE?Processor licenses, but potentially allowing more databases to consume a larger number of threads in parallel. It is a balancing act between isolation requirements verses performance requirements and cost.

Seeking Help

If you wish to discuss alternatives regarding your use of Oracle software, your compliance or to investigate the viability of migrating to PostgreSQL, please reach out to us here. For more information on our PostgreSQL offering, specifically designed for Oracle customers, please go to our PostgresPURE & Cortex product page.

?