zlacker

>>pul+(OP)
> Vertical scaling — a bigger, exponentially more expensive server

This is in practice not true at all. Vertical scaling is typically a sublinear cost increase (up to a point, but that point is a ridiculous beast of a machine), since you're (typically) upgrading just the CPU and/or just the RAM or just the storage; not all of them at once.

There are instances where you can get nearly 10x the machine for 2x the cost.

>>margin+lu
For small consumer products sure, but we're talking at the extreme end of performance and physical capabilities. Sure you can get a 2Ghz CPU for ~2x the price of a 200Mhz CPU, but how much are you going to pay for a 6.0Ghz CPU vs 5.0Ghz? 6.1Ghz vs 6.0Ghz?

>>teawre+gC
You can go from a 8T/16C Epyc 7xxx series CPU to a 32T/64C CPU and not even double the cost.

>>margin+CM
The article defines vertical scaling as using faster conveyer belts (serial performance) and horizontal scaling as using more conveyer belts (parallel performance).

So your example of adding more CPU cores would be horizontal scaling, while using a faster core would be vertical. Vertical scaling has diminishing returns.