Intel Details The Accelerators & Security Features For On Demand / Software Defined Silicon

[ll1025]

It's environmentally wasteful. Multiple identical pieces of hardware where the only difference is software restricting what the hardware can do.

It's the exact opposite. Currently (or at least a few years ago) Intel hides the ability to address more than 768GB behind a different SKU of the exact same CPU, I believe with traces lasered off to prevent aftermarket activation.

Any business that has built out a cluster on these devices and finds their memory needs increasing is likely going to have to procure a new cluster or expand their current one, at great materials cost, because businesses do not do CPU swaps in production hardware. And this problem could be corrected with the proposed plan via a license activation, with no additional hardware or materials: a win for society, as the business gets more value for less money and fewer physical resources are used up.

And it isn't a free market. If it was a legitimately free market then they wouldn't restrict what crops farmers can grow, drug sales and consumption, alcohol could be bought on Sunday regardless of where you lived,

First, farmers are not to my knowledge restricted on what they can grow. There are sometimes subsidy programs that can encourage specific crops but it is not illegal to grow (non-narcotic) crops to my knowledge.

Second, no one is arguing that we have a pure lassiez-faire free market, but the restrictions you mention are generally not done for market reasons but for safety ones. Some local places have decided that the public nuisance of Sunday drinking is not worth the societal benefit, and performing this ban at a county level is actually something that conservatives and democrats would agree is as good a way to do it as possible. Our country has decided-- for better or worse-- that certain drugs provide a danger to society if not controlled, so we control them. But the market effects are incidental, not the goal here.

What you're proposing is more in line with the oil / sugar / corn subsidies that you mention, which are widely acknowledged (by those not on the subsidy gravy train) to be deeply harmful to the market and society. This would be no different in that regard; it would distort the market in an attempt to divert where it naturally wants to go, for no real benefit.

And your idea of making regulation that spells out how a company may write their firmware sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare, as if we want legislators getting involved in semiconductor design or as if it wouldn't be trivial to loophole and a nightmare to enforce. Maybe you're not aware, but for decades things like RAID cards have required licenses to activate more advanced features (see HP's SmartArray cards). Would this apply to them? What about SANs (NetApp); the OS is generally considered firmware, and it sounds like we're making unlocks (dedup, encryption) illegal there too.

But here's the million-dollar question: Why? Is this literally because you don't like it, and want all of the features built in? Because that is not the end state. The end state is that you have to buy and install some dinky hardware module that literally connects traces to activate the feature. Congrats, you just increased hardware and labor costs for zero benefit to society.

[drakonas777]

Again, Open Source fans show their worth. Not actually helping open source, not starting or having any businesses, never designing a single IC, yet, "We hate, hate, hate". Perfectly explains why an Open Source desktop OS continues to find itself in .

First of all, linux desktop OS being "in the deepest hole" has nothing to do with "hate" and everything to do with development model, which imposes certain technical and organisational limitations. You are attributing far too much importance to several vocal people in the forums...

Second of all, the fact some particular person has not developed an IC does not automatically mean that person provides invalid argument. Same goes for your regular take like "you have no patches in this project, ergo you shoud shut up on this matter". Enough with that appeal to authority bullshit, it's nothing more then a logical fallacy.

Finally, it's actually you, who started this off-topic about the hate, because you found several opinions you don't like. I don't know where does your internal need to defend certain companies comes from, but it's a bit weird to complain about passionate linux users in a linux hardware forum.

[microcode]

Yeah, just not buying these chips.

[Teggs]

Pay early, pay often!

[MarkG]

I would hope that review sites would run their benchmark suites twice, fully locked and fully un-locked, and very clearly report the performance per dollar and performance per watt numbers.

Companies like IBM have been doing similar things for years (2006, IIRC). Rumor was that IBM offered a firmware update that doubled mainframe performance by literally removing NoOps every other instruction.

[Volta]

Ask Michael, but I don't think insulting him is any better.

Yes, but he can curse and insult everyone.

[smitty3268]

It's environmentally wasteful. Multiple identical pieces of hardware where the only difference is software restricting what the hardware can do.

CPUs are already done that way, the only difference is that they physically solder off sections rather than doing it by software. Because it's cheaper to design and validate 1 hardware design rather than 20 similar but all slightly different ones. Also cheaper to make sure you're manufacturing the right number of each model rather than building extras of one that then doesn't get the sales you expected.

For example, the Ryzen 7900X has 12 cores, but the silicon is built for 16. Some of them may be disabled because they were bad silicon, but I guarantee at least at some point they'll be selling legit 16 core cpus that are just modified to be restricted down to 12 cores.

[tildearrow]

And why are you letting this piece of trash to behave like that?

Ask Michael, but I don't think insulting him is any better.

[Volta]

See? You're the only one who defends proprietary and unethical. Intel, NVIDIA, HEVC, HEIF, SDSi, etc.

It's almost as if you do this on purpose to start flamewars and/or let your daily stress out on this forum.

I would like to hear from you what are the benefits of the existence of this program.

And why are you letting this piece of trash to behave like that?

[tildearrow]

Again, Open Source fans show their worth. Not actually helping open source, not starting or having any businesses, never designing a single IC, yet, "We hate, hate, hate". Perfectly explains why an Open Source desktop OS continues to find itself in the deepest hole.

See? You're the only one who defends proprietary and unethical. Intel, NVIDIA, HEVC, HEIF, SDSi, etc.

It's almost as if you do this on purpose to start flamewars and/or let your daily stress out on this forum.

I would like to hear from you what are the benefits of the existence of this program.