important clarification to add processor vs core microsoft definitions page shall contain the exact definition of what a processor is microsoftly speaking indeed this concept is quite blur if we refer to the numerous pages from different microsoft web sites for instance at we can find windows server standard x r bits way symmetric multiprocessing smp support other example for the same windows server r standard x edition at memory bound applications that do not require more than four processors supports up to gb of ram on to way servers windows server r standard x edition supports up to four cpus on one server if we refer to wikipedia multiprocessor architecture or multicore processor are both smp architecture thus by speaking sometimes about processors support sometimes about way smp support microsoft confuses us all coming to a quadri cores based server smp this leads to go from a standard edition processors support to a datacenter edition x smp support thus raising the license price as for no less than