How is this different than shared hosting?
Split-Dedicated is different from shared hosting in several ways. In a shared hosting environment, your website is competing for resources with hundreds—and in some cases thousands—of other clients' websites. Not only do you share the same limited pool of server resources, but server software as well, such as HTTP, MySQL, and PHP.
With Split-Dedicated, you have your own guaranteed amount of resources that no one else on the server can use. This model of hosting ensures you never have to worry about other clients impacting the performance of your site.
Shared hosting also has limited capabilities for customizing and tuning existing server software and installing new applications. With Split-Dedicated, your hosting environment can be fine tuned to meet the specific demands of your web applications.