Intel just released their new dual socket Xeon CPUs. The flagship is the E5-2699 V3 with 18 cores.
Two of these monsters in a workstation gets you 36 cores or 72 threads.
If you have such machine and wish to use all of its cores for network rendering, you'll need a 96-core license. This comes down to an annual cost of €1180, just to able to leverage all cores of a single (albeit extremely powerful!) render node.
Open question:
How much longer will Luxion be able to sustain per core licensing for network rendering?
Most other renderes seem to license per node. Next year Intel will be releasing 72-core CPUs.
Not a rant, just an observation based on current developments... I'm interested in your views...
Dries
I'm interested in this also. The existing model is flawed IMHO
Wow! Been curious what the future holds for these. I think it's almost time for a new computer. My current machine (i7) is showing some age.
shhhh, don't say that, i just got an i7 4 core, and very happy! But if my next machine is likely to be a 72 core beast I can't be 'paying by the core' for software
oooh, imagine 144 threads