I am surprised how many administrators know very little about hardware requirements, even the Solidworks integrators. The questions I have no one seems to know in the Solidworks community. One: does SQL use processor logical cores, if so how many? Two: What would be the advantage of dual processor (parallelizing computation) with 4 to 10 cores a piece to one processor with multi-cores? All on the back of I/O bus speeds limitations. All I am running is EPDM, not a general office server.

This is the issue for me. Intel manufactures so many hardware configurations; hyper threading, cores and multi processors but not all software developers utilize all of these configs for performance. Does SQL/database with EPDM USE multi-processor and mulit-cores? Then if so, by how many??? I hear all conflicting reasoning's, suggestions, and no one has a direct answer.. does anyone really know this question??  Has ANYONE ran benchmark tests on hardware requirements to that of hardware optioned by Intel? Are salesman just selling us a bunch of high priced junk if the output speed is fixed?

Example, if SQL running within Windows Sever 2012 and EPDM does not take advantage of a dual processor (parallelizing computation), why not a single fast multi core processor (by how many cores), (the fastest CPU, highest cache) benchmarked on an output spec of I/O bus and Ethernet speeds. Also, with or without hyper threading (modular software based on multiple threads) On or OFF?

Last question: If I am building a new server from the ground up, am I required to purchase CAL license for Windows server if EPDM/SQL come with its own per. seat (CAL) license? We are only using this server for EPDM, no other services.

Note: A SQL server (Processor Site Licenses (PSL)), will link to each logical processor as an individual license, hence the need for multi-processor server. This is not the setup for EPDM/SQL (CAL).

Output I/O example: 5 clients request SQL responses at the same time. The processor cues the request in milliseconds but now waits on the read/write speed of the hard drive (HDD) requests, then transmits each byte to the 5 clients at a set Ethernet bus speeds. The more the CPU's wait, speed on the front end is irrelevant if the back end dictates performance.

Thanks for any feedback.