It will affect anyone who’s upgraded or already using AMD’s 64-core EPYC CPUs. Taken from VMware …
Update to VMware’s per-CPU Pricing Model
Today we announced an important update to our per-CPU pricing model, reflecting our commitment to continue meeting our customers’ needs in an evolving industry landscape. This new pricing model will give our customers greater choice and allow us to better serve them.
While we will still be using a per-CPU approach, now, for any software offering that we license on a per-CPU basis, we will require one license for up to 32 physical cores. If a CPU has more than 32 cores, additional CPU licenses will be required. A FAQ related to this change is below.
Today’s announcement is a continuation of VMware’s journey to align our product offerings to industry standard pricing models. The change moves VMware closer to the current software industry standard model of core-based pricing. This approach will make it easier for customers to compare software licensing and pricing between VMware (using per-CPU with up to 32 cores) and other vendors (using per core pricing). It also helps us keep our pricing simple and relevant to where the hardware market is going.
The 32-core limit is designed to minimize customer impact given current core counts for most CPUs used in the industry. This change will likely have no impact on the vast majority of our current customers since they use Intel and AMD-based servers that are at or below the 32-core threshold. For the few customers who are currently deploying our software on CPUs with more than 32 cores, or for those that are in the process of purchasing physical servers with more than 32 cores per CPU, we are providing a grace period after the licensing metric change goes into effect on April 2, 2020. Any customer who purchases VMware software licenses, for deployment on a physical server with more than 32-cores per CPU, prior to April 30, 2020 will be eligible for additional free per-CPU licenses to cover the CPUs on that server.
Source: VMware