Dual-Core Support and Licensing

As most of you will know by now ESX 2.5.2 has been released and it support dual-core processors – although it has to admit the list of certified dual-core servers is still very limited. Anyway, people frequently ask questions about the licensing costs associated with dual-core. To answer this VMware has produced a FAQ. Dual-core will be licensed at a per socket level, not a per-core level – which follows the trend set by most vendors except (apparently) people like Orcale.

Link:

http://www.vmware.com/vcommunity/dual_core_licensing_faq.html