Wednesday, September 29th 2021
Is Intel Working on CPU-Features-as-a-Service Xeon processors?
Some of you might remember Intel's Upgrade Service, aka software locked CPUs that launched back in 2010 with the Pentium G6951 that could have an extra 1 MB of cache and Hyper-Threading unlocked for a mere $50. Well, it seems like Intel is working on something similar, but for Xeon CPUs this time around, although the exact details aren't clear as yet.
Phoronix spotted a Linux patch on GitHub for something called Intel Software Defined Silicon or SDSi for short. It's clear that it's for Xeon CPUs and the GitHub page mentions that SDSi "allows the configuration of additional CPU features through a license activation process." There's very little to go by beyond this, but it's not hard to draw parallels with Intel's Upgrade Service from last decade, just this time Intel is targeting its business customers rather than consumers.
Phoronix mentions that "[t]he SDSi kernel driver exposes a per-socket interface so their user-space application can provision an authentication key certificate that is written to internal NVRAM, provision their "capability activation payload", and reading of the SDSi state certificate that shows the CPU configuration state for a given processor." As to exactly what features Intel are planning on putting behind a paywall, we're going to have to to wait and see, but based on Intel's Upgrade Service, we might see things like cache and Hyper-Threading, as well as maybe AVX-512 or other "extra" instruction sets being offered at an extra cost. It might also be a feature for unlocking additional CPU sockets in a server. Time will tell what Intel has planned, but what is clear is that the company wants to be able to charge its customers more than once for its CPUs.
Sources:
GitHub, via Phoronix
Phoronix spotted a Linux patch on GitHub for something called Intel Software Defined Silicon or SDSi for short. It's clear that it's for Xeon CPUs and the GitHub page mentions that SDSi "allows the configuration of additional CPU features through a license activation process." There's very little to go by beyond this, but it's not hard to draw parallels with Intel's Upgrade Service from last decade, just this time Intel is targeting its business customers rather than consumers.
23 Comments on Is Intel Working on CPU-Features-as-a-Service Xeon processors?
en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/upgrade_service
Adobe as a service,
Spotify as a service,
and now Intel as a service, pay to unlock all it's features. Lol.
Garbage company. You buy a product for what it's capable for. Not skimped up or "need to register to unlock all features" blabla.
This is what that telemetry leads to.
No, what leads to this is idiots willing to pay for it.
Think we already do this though
K series chips unlocks features and they cost more.
Not to many people buy xeon chips so this isn't a large issue.
That said, with past history, it's hard not to draw conclusions.
Intel's way, I would go RISC V before I buy anything I have to pay a subscription to use.
A lot of big companies are looking at this as a concept.
Put electric seats in everything.
Put cruise control on everything.
Phone up, pay, use it until you stop paying.
How the actual Fffff, does this help us consume less, getting shit we don't need, how is that going to help getting to a carbon zero world, making more shit people may never use.
On chips, even server chip's (though if Intel thinks it's money it'll be in consumer chip's soon) it's just as balls, it costs to make shit retards (Intel)in resources ,all to get another slimey sub, Maybe, this shit needs consumer blockage in any market.
I've worked at places that built shit with software unlockable quadrupoles priced in the thousands for the key after spending a lot.
No thought of the waste of resource or man hours.
IMHO it's abhorrent, vile, greed incarnated.
This pattern does not work for individual components. A CPU cannot function on its own. In this case, it needs an OS and peripherals for the activation which Intel has a dubious control over. Anyway it has similar issues with console cracking, if not greater.
Most probably they will sell those BS inside datacenter solutions rather than as PC components.