I observed a few things when loading VMware ESXi on modern mini PCs running the latest hybrid Intel CPUs. These observations include: - Odd CPU socket config recognized - Double the power consumption with VMware ESXi vs Proxmox

Instead of VMware ESXi recognizing the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H processor as a single socket with multiple cores, it recognizes it as (2) sockets and 7 cores per socket. Proxmox recognizes it as (1) socket and 18 CPUs.

In comparing power consumption between VMware ESXi and Proxmox, I discovered that VMware ESXi draws twice the power compared to Proxmox when both are running on the Intel Core Ultra 5 processor.