HP invents virtual CPU screwdriver

We're not sure which marketing genius thought up the "instant capacity on demand" (iCOD) tagline at HP, but whoever it was, full marks for opacity. Sifting through the chaff, the scheme appears to be a cunning way for HP to sell you more L, N and V class servers, which is what you probably expected anyway. These servers come with four, eight and 32 processors and from January next year, HP will ship machines with a full complement of chips onboard, with corporate customers only paying for the processors they think they need need. When they decide they need to use all the processors in whichever box they buy, they turn a virtual screwdriver using an HP/UX command. Why is it so cunning? Well, if you decide to take the HP route, and buy yourself a 32-way server, it's going to be hard to resist turning the virtual screwdriver, isn't it? At which point you start paying the proper price. ® * FactOid. In the good (bad) old days of IBM mainframe computing, you upgraded memory from by inviting a Big Blue engineer to twiddle his thumbs for an afternoon, while he pretended he was installing the extra memory. Instead, he just turned a screwdriver and enabled the memory that was already there.