"Intel Software Defined Silicon" Coming To Linux For Activating Extra Licensed Hardware Features

[Ironmask]

To all those that are saying Intel is "evil" and "greedy", I hate to break it to all of you but the purpose of a business is to make as much money as it can, that's it, within the laws of the country it operates in, of course.

All of Intel's employees, from the highest paid executive to the lowest paid peon, wants to earn as much as they can, they want raises, bonuses, benefits, and some of them probably have a relative or friend that they would like to see hired. The only way this happens is if intel makes money. When they don't they lay off people, like they did a few years ago when they laid off 500 people in one shot.

Think of yourselves at your jobs, you want job security, better pay, better benefits don't you? Well then you want the company you work for to make as much money as they possibly can.

Well then that's a shame, isn't it? Turns out when you employ bad business practices, you get lawsuits and lose customers.
No, the business world isn't "be as greedy as possible", it's "how much can you get away with without pissing off your customers."
Intel is pissing off their customers. And now AMD is getting all their customers. No, this is not "making money".

[ms178]

unfortunately, barring a seriously major security gaffe on the part of intel, no.

Hehe, not all hope is lost then! *thinking of recent security gaffes of Intel*

But seriously, the incentive to crack these mechanisms could attract the best people of the scene.

[ssokolow]

That's a bit more understandable. When you're buying a large mainframe/server, you think of it less as your property and more as a utility, like water. And just like the city owns and repairs your pipes, the mainframe corporation own and maintain your mainframe for you. Really not much different from the concept the cloud, just a lot clunkier.

This is audacious because your home computer is not a business utility, it literally is your property and you own it when you purchase it and expect to do whatever you want with it whether it's even a sane choice or not.

Actually, I was referring more to things like how, in 1956, the U.S. government sued IBM to force them to allow customers the option of buying their hardware rather than just renting it. These companies have a long tradition of doing things like that.

It's reminiscent of how it used to be illegal to connect non-phone-company hardware to the phone line until they overstepped and tried to use the "could harm the function of the network" argument on an "amplifier" that contained no electronic components and was basically just a reverse ear trumpet that clipped onto the handset.

[MadeUpName]

To all those that are saying Intel is "evil" and "greedy", I hate to break it to all of you but the purpose of a business is to make as much money as it can, that's it, within the laws of the country it operates in, of course.

All of Intel's employees, from the highest paid executive to the lowest paid peon, wants to earn as much as they can, they want raises, bonuses, benefits, and some of them probably have a relative or friend that they would like to see hired. The only way this happens is if intel makes money. When they don't they lay off people, like they did a few years ago when they laid off 500 people in one shot.

Think of yourselves at your jobs, you want job security, better pay, better benefits don't you? Well then you want the company you work for to make as much money as they possibly can.

Sure.. But what yo u are missing is that if you tick off the customers enough you will start to lose them and your profits will suffer. Intel has a bad case of next quarter bonuses going on here raher than long term strategy.

[sophisticles]

To all those that are saying Intel is "evil" and "greedy", I hate to break it to all of you but the purpose of a business is to make as much money as it can, that's it, within the laws of the country it operates in, of course.

All of Intel's employees, from the highest paid executive to the lowest paid peon, wants to earn as much as they can, they want raises, bonuses, benefits, and some of them probably have a relative or friend that they would like to see hired. The only way this happens is if intel makes money. When they don't they lay off people, like they did a few years ago when they laid off 500 people in one shot.

Think of yourselves at your jobs, you want job security, better pay, better benefits don't you? Well then you want the company you work for to make as much money as they possibly can.

[oiaohm]

It is plausible that enabling more feature in chip would rise the power budget and thermal load. So except for rack servers that do not care noise level, a more feature-full CPU means a different requirement in CPU cooling. If someone don't need to upgrade the CPU cooler after such firmware unlock, it may mean someone over-provisioned the cooler at the beginning, which is, despite your claim, not good for "the environment".

This is a very big mistake. You see it with the epic cpu from AMD. You have 64 core chip and you have a 8 core chip both use the same cooler. Neither is over provisioned. Both are still technically under provisioned for cooling. Why does AMD make epic cpus with 1 core per chiplet this is cooling. A totally clock unlocked EPIC core can generate a hell load of heat. Generally you multi core cpus are in fact thermal throttling their clock speeds when under multi threaded loads. Stupid as it sounds a multi thread working load does get more processing done with more cores at a lower clock speed. If you tasks is more single threaded less cores active allowing higher clock speed is a good thing.

The reality in the server world there is almost never such a thing as over-provisioned cooling any more. You are always under provisioned the question is how much clock speed are you giving up to work inside the provisioned cooling. The reality if you are talk truly fully provisioned cooling for a CPU the idle core temperature would be like 10C or lower you only find this in some movie render farms. Yes this 10C is so high loads on the CPU don't get to the speed throttling point and of course keeping the cooling loop that cold is very power expensive.

It use to be true that there was such thing as CPU with maxed out cooling so you could over-provision the cooler but that has not been true for a decade+ now. Yes the introduction of thermal throttling clock speeds was when we really stopped having cpus with maxed out cooling. Instead it comes have we provisioned enough cooling that the machine works decently of course this level of cooling no matter the features the CPU has enabled is always well and truly under provisioned.

Lot of people have the wrong idea that it possible to over provision a cooler on server parts with air cooling parts. You server is using air cooling the cpu cooling is under provisioned no matter what it is. You are not need to wrap your in pipes to keep you in water cool and you are doing water cooling again you have not over provisioned cooling at this point with servers either.

What you are required to in fact do so that you do over provision the cooling in a Xeon or a Epic cpu starts people think that you are insane. I had person as me to fully provision the cooling on Xeon and Epic for the max performance the cpu could give and when I gave them the details of the cost the fact for that money they could buy more silicon and take more rack space and have more over all performance by simple letting the cpu work under provisioned in cooling and thermal throttle.

CPU are quite smart these days at working out how to clock as high as they can for the cooling you have so working inside the under provisioned cooling environment quite happily. This is why firmware unlocking CPU features in a lot of ways should not require changing the cooling you are already in the dog house of under provisioned cooling whats been stuck a bit deeper in the dog house.

[drakonas777]

It is plausible that enabling more feature in chip would rise the power budget and thermal load. So except for rack servers that do not care noise level, a more feature-full CPU means a different requirement in CPU cooling. If someone don't need to upgrade the CPU cooler after such firmware unlock, it may mean someone over-provisioned the cooler at the beginning, which is, despite your claim, not good for "the environment".

I don't quite understand your argument. If someone over-provisioned the cooler at the beginning, then there is no need for new cooler and old one can be reused. It's a positive thing for environment. The opposite is more likely: initial cooler was too weak and new is required after the unlocking. This means the old one goes to trash or is sold in used parts marked. The former situation is actually not good for environment. However, there a a lot of ways how to handle this situation regarding potentially higher power usage after the unlock. That is the reason why I said "if done right". These all details and nuances are part of the "done right".

My point was kind of broader one: SDS can be useful as any other technology/methodology at least in theory.

[billyswong]

It's not necessarily an evil. Depends on implementation and segmentation. Actually it can be very good feature for both the costumers and the company, even partly for the environment if done right. Most of you are antagonistic against software defined hardware features by default for some reason, even though it has no difference from the factory locked/fused off features talking pure consequences.

The idea that features can be unlocked for the money somehow triggers the f**k of you. Reality is that it's far better than fused off functionality assuming price/value proposition is unchanged. For example, say you purchase 5600X yeah. Whats's wrong to pay some extra and unlock 8 cores? As I said, assuming unchanged price/value at the very minimum you get effortless upgrade. No need to perform actual manual hardware upgrade, no need to acquire new CPU, no need to sell the old one. Cores are already there right now, and they are most likely functional considering TSMC 7N yields. Another example: say you have 6600K and a lot of modern games stutter as f**k. Say you pay some sane amount of money (20-50 dollars or something since it's old CPU) and unlock 8 threads. Now you can improve your gaming experience significantly, no need to upgrade to new platform and increase e-waste. The same goes for ISA or fixed function features. Reality is that CPUs were segmented this way for the ages and you couldn't do s***t about it. With paid upgrade you at least would have an option.

As I said - it can go both ways. It's totally possible (perhaps event probable) Intel will do some f****ed up move with this so I understand your position somewhat. But I certainly won't subscribe to an "evil by default" position at this moment. I want to see first.

It is plausible that enabling more feature in chip would rise the power budget and thermal load. So except for rack servers that do not care noise level, a more feature-full CPU means a different requirement in CPU cooling. If someone don't need to upgrade the CPU cooler after such firmware unlock, it may mean someone over-provisioned the cooler at the beginning, which is, despite your claim, not good for "the environment".

[kpedersen]

I hope Intel headquarters gets infested with locusts and fleas.

Sounds like it already is. And the locusts and fleas annoyingly earn a good wage! :/

[Mike Frett]

DLC for CPU's...I hope Intel headquarters gets infested with locusts and fleas.