One of the challenges with a floating license is determining just how many seats you need. With Intel® Software Development Products, knowing what constitutes checking out a license can help answer this question. Every unique user of a product will check out a license seat during usage of that product. The exact action that causes a check-out varies by product.
A common question is how multiple users and multiple machines count license seats. A single user on a single machine will use one seat, even with multiple instances of a product in use (for instance, compiling in parallel). If you have multiple users, each user will check-out their own license seat. If a single user is using multiple machines (virtual or physical), each machine will check-out a separate license seat.
For example, if you have 10 users using the product simultaneously from a single shared server, you will need a minimum of 10 license seats. If one user launches 10 parallel compiles on a single machine, this will only consume one license seat. However, if those 10 compiles are run on 5 different machines (2 per machine), then 5 license seats will be used.
The key point is the unique combination of user and machine. A single user on a single machine will only need one seat. If the user or the machine is different, then each needs to check out a separate license seat. However, remember that floating license seats are checked out, not permanently assigned, so it is a question of how many user-machine combinations are accessing the products concurrently, not in total.
Also keep in mind that runtime components (runtime libraries, analysis tool collections) do not consume a license seat. So the number of users running a particular code or collecting analysis data is irrelevant to the number of seats you need.
Additionally, if you have a license for a product suite, using any component of that suite will check out a license seat for the entire suite, as the components are bundled together in the license. For example, if you have a user viewing Intel® VTune™ Amplifier results, and you have a license for Intel® Parallel Studio XE Professional Edition, that user will consume a seat for the entire suite, leaving one less seat for other users to compile.
For more questions on licensing, please see our Product Licensing FAQ, and if you need additional assistance, see our Get Help page for your support options.