As you may know, CPU manufacturers reached the limits of known physics by making CPU’s faster and faster. They couldn’t scale up any more so it was time to scale out. The result of hitting this wall was to add an extra core to the CPU, giving us dual core processors that have been shipping in PC’s and servers for a while now. Today, Intel launched their first quad core CPU. That’s basically 4 processing engines in one CPU. Intel has posted loads on information on this new technology on their website.
A quad core will appear to your operating system as 4 CPU’s. Microsoft don’t license per core so that won’t be a problem. Where you will have licensing issues is where vendors license per core. I’m fairly sure IBM do this with Lotus Domino … but hey … Notes Sucks!
I can’t claim to be a CPU guru. Where I see this CPU really being useful is in systems where number crunching is vital, e.g. VM hypervisors, hefty simultation systems, etc.