MySQL: What is the maximum number of cores used by a single MySQL server?

Question

What is the maximum number of cores used by a single MySQL server in a production setting?

Answer 1

The MySQL server can use any [1] number of cores. But remember that a single connection/query will only use one thread. So while MySQL supports many core the queries are processed on one core each.

• [1] wrt. recent technology.

Answer 2

I recommend you MySQL 5.5 -- add this manual page and licence page and this benchmark together and you will see why. To clarify further: MySQL -- rather, the InnoDB storage engine -- will use all cores in the system but up until 5.4 it actually slowed down with a higher number of cores, Google fixed this and the first MySQL to contain it is 5.5.

This fix also can be found in the 1.0.4 plugin and newer which can be enabled in MySQL 5.1.38.