I'm just clearing out the office and came across a piece in Information Age from August 2005. It was more or less along the lines I outlined in a previous post on multi-core CPUs and licensing.

I mentioned then (actually, just last week) about the potential ongoing problems:

I can see the problems extending though as more multi-core x86 cores come on line. It's going to take a year or so for the kinks to be worked out of the different systems, and we may yet see some changes and equalization of the different solutions across different suppliers and manufacturers.

The article in Information Age (actually in the Insider section, page 10 - I can't find an online copy) mentioned something I hadn't considered - the role that distributed computing, grids and virtualization might play in the way people are charged.