I don't like this move, and it's not just because it might prove more expensive, it just seems fundamentally wrong to start counting cores, and here's why.

Multi-core CPUs were largely introduced to cater for the fact that the chip manufacturers were largely finding they couldn't ramp up the clock speeds on their CPUs like they used to, and to keep the raw speeds going up, they started throwing more cores at the problem instead. Since this is effectively the natural progression of things and no real indication of additional power (in 5 years time we may well have 32 core CPUs etc), it is as senseless as expecting a user to pay more a decade ago for a 2GHz server than for a 1GHz server.

I believe physical CPU sockets should remain the way this is calculated as clearly adding additional CPUs is something that is outside the normal trend of CPU development. Additional cores however are the way the market has been going for some years now and it doesn't seem right to financially penalise someone just for having a more up-to-date CPU which naturally will have more cores