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Intel's Anti-Overclocking Technology Simplified
John Thorensen writes "Found a fantastic article on Intel's recent Anti-Overclocking patent at Fastsilicon.com. Worth the read, as it also explains some of the technical and ethical issues of overclocking. Good to see that some tech journalists can still write material understandable by an average person."
Beware - soon we will find people who sell overclocking devices going to jail for violating DMCA.
(yes, I forgot my password here.. again lol)
-Honestman
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
Error 502
;)
Remote server down or not responding.
Looks like Fastsilicon.com isn't that fast
Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
1. Detect servers with overclocked processors 2. Post link to slashdot 3. Processor is fried :)
What ethical issues are there relating to overclocking? Overclocking a chip, and selling it at a higher speed is already called "fraud". There's nothing ethical or unethical about overclocking. Is redlining your car's engine unethical? Stupid maybe, but that's about it...
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Personally, I'd like to be able to underclock better so it would be easier to built a really quiet PC. Although there are a few articles about it, silent PCs are an underserved area of the market.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
..we discuss the ethical implications of using your teabags twice instead of once, and we explore the high-tech solutions to this problem, and the clear connection to terrorism.
This technique is nothing more than embedding an oscillator on-chip, and using that to monitor the main clock.
Since most CPUs internally multiply their clock (you don't feed a 3.0 GHz P4 a 3.0 GHz clock, you feed it a much slower clock and it multiplies it up), why then don't manufacturer's just use an embedded clock and do away with all this?
Simple - it is very hard to have an accurate clock embedded in the CPU. External clocks can use a quartz crystal to vibrate and make the clock - an embedded oscillator would have to use an on-chip delay line or RC network, which will drift over time, temperature, and voltage.
So all they can do with a system like this is catch you if you are overclocking by a fairly large amount - were they to try to trap you at a 10% overclock they would have false trips due to process variation.
To extend the analogy the article used: you will get a speeding ticket if you are going 20 over the speed limit. Keep it less than 10 over and you will be fine.
NOTE: this is not advice condoning overclocking or speeding! This is just an analysis of the technology involved.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Let's start overclocking, enhancing, and reverse engineering EVERYTHING to protest these laws.
Preventing overclocking is just corportate bs. Remember the liminal messaging of Brave New World, "I'm tired of old things. I want new things. If it's broken, don't fix it. Throw old things away."
In all honesty, people probably break as many chips as they enhance and overclocking helps profits for chip makers. Anyways, you can use this code, compared against the time/date clock to determine if a chip is overclocked. Software/electronic patents are a bunch of bullcrap for things like this because it's so damn simple to recreate the effect.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Otherwise, I agree with you.
You are not the customer.
I don't think that the author of this article actually understands the patent in question. Specifically, the reference signal is absolutely not generated on the CPU die, as the author claims. Intel's new scheme is still dependent on the chipset's cooperation.
h tm l
Anyway, I won't go into anymore detail here, because I explain the patent and its implications for overclocking in the following Ars news post:
http://arstechnica.com/archive/news/1048630320.
Senior CPU Editor | Ars Technica | http://arstechnica.com/
If overclocking your poor processor to its death is ethical, then so is driving your herd of sheep off a cliff, or nailing your dog's feet to the floor so you can use it as a doorstop.
And those people who post a link to slashdot without providing a mirror or cache just so they can watch some innocent, defenseless server get turned into a smoking carbon shell are no better.
You know, IC's and other silicon-die based products have rights as well.
This has been a PSA from FETS (Fanatics for the Ethical Treatment of Silicon)
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
... An over-clock deterrent mechanism of a chipset which comprises an over-clock detection circuit for detecting over-clocking of a system ... and an over-clock prevention (thwarting) circuit.
Okay, to implement this, they're including a reference clock on the chip, which means that processors of different (marketed) speeds will have to be made with a different process (which has maybe been true for a long time, but I was lead to believe that, eg in the pIII days, the wafers that failed 1Ghz just got sold as 833MHz, etc).
So instead of doing all these calculations to decide if you're "speeding," and then doing even *more* calculations to penalize you, why don't they just expose this reference clock speed in a special interrupt call? And maybe even the relation to the operating speed (eg, "you are overclocked by 10%")? Then, they could release an app that would tell you how fast your computer was SUPPOSED to be, and how fast it IS.
Then, OC'ers could have their cake, and no one else could be taken advantage of by unscrupulous OEMs who overclock to bump up their margins. I concede the point that "most average people will never check anyway," but just having the information *available* should protect Intel from liability, which seems to be the essential idea. Plus, the threat of having the practice exposed at any time should stop at least some of the overclock-resellers.
This is Nigel, the owner of fastsilicon.com. As you probably already know, we are having some issues with our server at the moment. Thanks for your support. Now, focusing on the article... "I don't think that the author of this article actually understands the patent in question" This article was not written for the "l33t geek", but for the average "user" to understand. We have simplified many of the more technical terms. And yes, we fully understand what were talking about :)
I appreciate all your feedback.