1-6 core per CPU

Depending upon the CPU user in a server, it could be a processor which has Dual, Quad, Six Cores per physical processor or socket.

New Xeon processors in the future could have 50 cores per processor!

see here
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/133541-intels-64-core-champion-in-depth-on-xeon-phi

A core is an independant CPU, original processors were a single core unit, today, it's common place to have multiple CPUs inside the die (case).

So the metal thing you put in a socket, has multiple CPUs (cores) inside it.

So, yes, 1-6 Cores, does mean it actually have 1-6 CPUs inside it!

because technology has made things smaller, hence the description of technology in
nm.

if you look at the Processors Lithography, you will see it's getting smaller!

e.g.

http://ark.intel.com/products/63696

32nm

http://ark.intel.com/products/27259/Intel-Xeon-Processor-1_40-GHz-256K-Cache-400-MHz-FSB

180nm

e.g. a little off topic, but latest GPUs (graphics chips) have 512 or 1024 Cores on a single CHIP!

In a VMware Context, this means, that you can use 1 CPU (a vCPU) in the virtual machine, is equal to 1 Core on the physical host, for some of the time. (the scheduler will move the process from Core to Core in the physical server).

see also this recent Question, which we answer about Cores, Sockets and Allocations

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/VMWare/Q_27971693.html

When referring to Cores, you are mostly correct. We are talking about CPUs in a CPU *socket*. So, for example, if you were to pop the hood of your physical server, you may see 1 or 2 CPU "sockets". Now, within those sockets, you might have embedded CPU *cores* that total anywhere from none (just the CPU socket itself, but that is rare to non-existent these days), to up to 12 (I actually have dual socket, 12-core servers in my environment). So, if you have a dual socket 6-core CPU server, that in essence provides 12 CPUs for your virtual environment. If you have Hyperthreading enabled in your BIOS, that basically doubles the CPU to 24 (Hyperthreading allows multiple "threads" of processes over a single core).

Hope that helps...

Regards.
~coolsport00

yes,

and 12 Cores in one CPU socket
and 50 Cores in one CPU socket in the future!

Yep...you got it! :)

~coolsport00