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Intel Wants To Charge $50 To Unlock Your CPU's Full Capabilities
MBCook writes "Turnkey CPU upgrades aren't just for mainframes anymore. According to Engadget, OEMs (including Gateway) are selling computers with the Intel Pentium G6951, which can have extra cache and hyper-threading enabled through a $50 software unlock called Intel Upgrade Service."
Especially since it'll likely be pirated before the CPU ships.
Can you hear that?
That's the sound of so many informed geeks switching to AMD.
Except, I'm not sure how that really applies to hardware. Can you license hardware? Remember, modding consoles is illegal because you start fiddling with licensed software as well, not just the hardware you own.
IBM's been doing that sort of thing for years. They ship you a mainframe with more processors than you ordered or a disk array with more disk than you ordered, and you can pay them to turn it on.
Yes, but I'm pretty sure that's all predicated on IBM service contracts and/or the license on the IBM OS/application software running on the system.
If you're running a completely-FOSS debian install on top of these new Intel processors, what leverage do they have on you?
coding is life
Look at it this way: you buy a CPU at $200 with one core. A year later, you need more performance. Instead of trashing the entire computer (ram, cpu, and motherboard at least), you simply pay a mere $50, unlock 3 more cores, booth the clock by 100% and throw-in hyperthreading. You'll extend the life of the unit for at least another year saving a few hundred dollars. Make it 6 months and another 6 months but the idea is the same.
I might work great if the price and options are right.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
I'm getting so fucking tired of companies creating ways to further nickel and dime.
There's no chance this coupon is going to bring down the price of a computer by $50 to correspond to the loss of features, this is just another way to make some coin after the fact.
We never end up saving money, it's all bullshit.
You already are... by buying the Pentium instead of the more expensive i3 that already has the extra MB of L3 and HT enabled.
_____
Intel and AMD have both been shipping chips with certain features disabled to meet market demands for years. Nvidia and ATI do the same with GPUs. Sometimes the disabled parts are actually defective, but sometimes not. Then you have two chips that cost the exact same to manufacture sell at two different price points, with the manufacturer intentionally choosing to sell some at a lower price (with the plan of making up the difference through higher sales).
Owners of certain AMD processors have been able to unlock entire cores along with extra cache for some time now. Intel is just trying to profit from it. I just don't know how well that idea will go over with the uninformed masses. I think many will be just a bit pissed-off that they were sold an intentionally-crippled computer. Unfortunately, any backlash will be aimed at the company who's logo is on the box, not Intel.
Not a great analogy. Can you try again only with more cars?
This isn't a case of you buying a Core i7 and Intel saying "by the way, we only gave you a Core i5, but you can have the full i7 you paid for if you give us another $50".
This is a case of you buying a Core i5 and Intel saying "here is exactly what you paid for, and by the way, if you ever decide you should have bought a Core i7 instead, we can magically teleport one into your computer for just $50".
If you want the pocket knife with a built-in compass, pay for the one that has a compass in it. If you deliberately buy a knife that says "KNIFE WITHOUT COMPASS (compass is available at extra cost)", you have no reason to complain when it turns out you have to pay extra to get a compass!
There's no bait-and-switch here. People are getting exactly what is advertised. Where's the problem?
They wouldn't have sold the crippled CPU to you if $200 wasn't a fair price for at least the full quad-core CPU, since that's what they had to manufacture. Whether you keep it as single-core, or pay extra for the upgrade, you are with absolute certainty being ripped off.
https://retailupgrades.intel.com/Page.aspx?Name=WhereToBuy
Except that I've already paid for that hardware with the original $200, and Intel made a profit on it unless they were daft enough to sell it to me at a loss. It cost a fixed amount to build that chip, based on wafer cost, die size, test time and yield. It'd be one thing if they took a bunch of chips in which some of the nonessential features failed final test and then sold them at a lower cost instead of throwing them away, but these proposed feature-locked chips are necessarily fully-functional chips in which they've chosen to hold some of the features for ransom. This is simply price gouging.
This is just like paying $20,000 for an SUV, and then later paying another $5,000 for the key that opens the back doors and the cargo area once I've decided that two seats and a glovebox aren't enough for me.
Yep sounds like they'd need DMCA, and if I was the CEO of AMD I'd be fricking dancing in the streets at this news. hell the commercial writes itself /shows sleazy used car salesman type selling PCs/ "Intel sells you hardware you can't use until you pay ANOTHER fee on TOP of what you paid for your computer. We here at AMD think you should get what you paid for, so we don't deal with such shady tactics" /sleazy salesman points at Intel box that side falls off and tries to cover it up/
hell between this and Intel getting investigated for shady dealings after having to shell out 1.25b to AMD to get them to shut up, it's like the gift that keeps on giving!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It sounds like you are a bit unclear on the concept of pricing. Here's a clue:
The price of something has nothing at all to do with what it costs to produce or deliver--it depends only upon what it is worth to the customer.
So no, it doesn't matter whether the hardware you bought is capable of functioning as an i7, because you didn't pay for an i7, and therefore you didn't buy it.
they are determined to hand AMD a PR club they can use to beat Intel about the head.
I can just see the ad bylines now, "Why pay extra to have the IQ of your microprocessor raised to average, when you can get one with a higher IQ with no additional hidden costs?"
This is purely a marketing ploy to see if they can sucker consumers into accepting, so that can generate an additional profit line.
Or in filesystems...
You install Windows on a 1000gb hard drive you bought, and Windows only provides you 500gb of usable space. A few years later, when you are running out of space....
Dialog box: "Warning: C: only has 5 gigabytes of space left out of 500gb. You can visit http: upgrade . microsoft .com / morespace
to expand your system storage capacity.... Your storage software is currently: Bronze Edition (limit: 500gb);
you can upgrade to Silver (limit: 750gb) for $99.99 or Gold (limit: 1000gb) for $199.99.
Or platinum for $299.99 to allow you to add a second hard drive to your computer"
And then we could have hard drive manufacturers sell 1TB hard drives that can be upgraded to 1.5TB or 2TB hard drives by running a program and inputting an activation code from a web site......
the higher end CPU also costs the same to manufacture
The higher end CPU actually costs fractionally less to manufacture; they are all created unlocked (because they have to be fully tested unlocked), but then the lower-end CPUs have an extra assembly step of getting locked down. And the company has to spend the money on the whole unlock sales-force.
The take-away here is that when I buy an Intel processor, I'm not getting the best performance, I'm not getting the best price, and I'm not getting the the best value. At best, I'll get crippleware. Crippleware sucked and I'm glad it died out of the marketplace back in the late 90s.
Some Intel products open security holes on your system with their defective DRM: http://extendedsubset.com/?p=30 . I just figured they couldn't get competent C programmers after what they did to Randal Schwartz http://www.lightlink.com/spacenka/fors/ . The HDCP leak was yet another example of fail. But now they want to bring this level of quality engineering directly into the CPU? Haha, no thanks guys.
Imagine the APT malware that would be possible if the CPU microcode update protections get busted wide-open like HDCP just did.
Now was it really such a good idea to hand the Elbonian Business Network a way to sell cracks for who-knows-how-many millions of CPUs for $50 each? Congratulations Intel, the black market value of a crack on your microcode just went from $100k to $M++. Did you stop to consider the fact that some of the top supercomputers on the planet are botnets? That's right: the adversary has the computational resources of a state actor and he doesn't even pay his own power bill.
I'm sitting right now within arm's reach of 14 Intel cores I've bought within the last year or two (from Atoms to i7's), never mind the stuff I have a voice in professionally. My next general purpose CPU is coming from AMD.
When you try to unlock an extra core or to overclock a processor there is no guarantee it will work. The manufacturer tells you what the specs of the unit are , which is what you paid for, and from then on you are on your own.
Here we are talking about a case where the cpu has features disabled on purpose but guaranteed to work as long as you provide a ransom fee. While I can find some logic in it, they are in fact telling the consumer that they make a good profit already with the price they charge for the "crippled" unit, since they are willing to sell it at that price. Then the extra $$ is the "idiot tax" they will get from some users.
I really hope AMD returns to its early Athlon days so that Intel can be in check. Judging from the previews of their netbook APU (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3933/amds-zacate-apu-performance-update) they might have something to show next year...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
The physical difference between your uber cpu and a z80 is half a teaspoon of sand and some subtlety in the arrangement. You don't think you actually paying that much for the physical material in your processor are you? If a cpu manufacturer just sold their top cpu design at it's best configuration with the development costs spread evenly then they would find themselves priced out of the entry level market (sell far less chips and the top ones would end up being far more expensive). All the variations in cpu's are a way to spread those design costs around while not forcing people to pay for what they don't need. What's being proposed here is brilliant in principle, put the extra stuff on the chip (Which doesn't cost them much) and give people the upgrade opportunity, which should be far cheaper for all concerned than stamping out another piece of nearly identical silicon when the customer discovers the new generation of games aren't quite fast enough. My primary concern is that if this is a boot time driver update then Intel's "upgrade" only applies to whatever operating systems they deem fit to support.
...except that you did buy an i7, it's just that they didn't tell you about it. Just because a feature wasn't advertised doesn't mean I didn't pay for it when I bought the hardware, or that the price I paid didn't include the cost of manufacturing that extra feature. You shouldn't be going around critiquing other peoples' analogies if you're going to liken activating hardware that you've already paid for to magically teleporting new hardware into your computer...
So here are three scenarios:
1. You have a choice of buying an i5 for $200, or an i7 for $300.
2. You have a choice of buying an i7 that pretends to be an i5 for $200, or an i7 for $300.
3. You have a choice of buying an i7 that pretends to be an i5 for $200, or an i7 for $300. If you pay $200, you can later for a payment of $100 turn it into an i7.
For me, choices (1) and (2) are identical, but choice (3) is without any doubt better. There is no situation where I am worse off than with choice 1 or 2, and in some situations I'm better off.
When you have informed consumers and zero barriers, then you have a free market. When that happens, you can't charge monopoly pricing (what the market will bear) because someone else will enter at a lower price. And no, the markup will not approach zero. If you think that, then you have no clue about finance (or are a liar trying to make others look bad by lying). Either way, that makes your opinion not worth listening to. And the fact you are an AC only supports the theory that you are a lying idiot.
Learn to love Alaska
If they're already doing the serial number, then a unique random code wouldn't be much of a bother.
There'd have to be more to it than just that though. Usually in those cases (such as with the sat receivers) they have to put in special circuitry in the chip.
lets say they didn't do that and just put another random number in there, lets not even say they hash the sn, we'll give them benefit of the doubt that they use a real random number and just keep a table at the plant for sn and random unlock code.
Then when you "purchase your upgrade", they mail you a link to a downloadable program, and an unlock key. You download the program, punch in the key, and the program confirms the key matches your proc and its random number, and the program then tells the processor to bump.
See the problem? The program is the gatekeeper, not the chip. Ten minutes with a disassembler and you figure out how the program is talking to the chip to unlock it, and it's cracked.
First, a clarification. It's totally impractical to physically differentiate chips during production. They use lithography, and you can't just have a machine at the end of the line that goes in with tweezers making jumper changes. The chips instead have a grid of blowable fuses. At the end of the line, the machine with the SN list drops down the pins onto the chip and runs the initial tests on the chip, and then blows the fuses corresponding to the serial number of the chip. This is irreversible. This is how they all do it. And this is how they would set an unlock code too.
Getting back to the problem. If all you are doing is setting another number on the chip, you aren't protecting the chip, you're only using it as a way to store another number. The only reason you need to know the number to unlock the chip is because the unlock program insists on your license key matching the code it reads off the chip. The program is a very weak protection, easily cracked or decompiled.
The "correct" way to do it is different:
The unlock code is still blown fuses like the serial number, but with a difference. It's WRITE ONLY. There's no instructions you can send to the processor to ask it what its unlock code is. Instead, there's a new procedure added to the chip that allows the license program to SEND the unlock code to the chip. The chip then, internally, compares the provided number with the burned one, and if they match, it unlocks. If not, it doesn't. And done properly, it won't allow another attempt for some time, possibly until it's been power cycled. This prevents brute-forcing it.
(some of the more viscous methods used in the cable industry are to only allow a fixed number of attempts, and after so many fails, the chip bricks itself or becomes permanently locked etc, via burning another of its internal fuses)
This takes protection out of the hands of the program, and puts it in the processor, safely out of reach of most people. But it does require some additional changes to the chip. In retrospect, considering all that's IN the chip to begin with, I suppose it's not that big of a deal to add, but I just wanted you to understand it's not just a matter of writing another number to the fuses.
If they were stupid, the unlock code would be a hash of the proc sn. In that case, it's quite possible that the hash algorythm could be discovered, in which case anyone could write an unlocker or a keygen for the downloadable app.
But if they were using a hash, then it wouldn't be necessary to burn the unlock code into the chip, since the proc could run the hash on its sn itself and compare with the provided hash. But as I said, that would be the stupid way to do it, and I doubt it would save them much money in the long run even if it never was broken.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
There's no bait and switch, but people instinctively understand that the sale price is supposed to closely track the marginal cost of production. Speculatively including extras but leaving them disabled reveals in bold print that the market isn't sufficiently healthy to drive the price down to it's natural free market level. When it's physically separable extra hardware you can at least argue that it's just distributed warehousing.
People won't really be able to help thinking that Intel could afford to give them a better deal since flipping the switch costs nothing.
So here are three scenarios:
1. You have a choice of buying an i5 for $200, or an i7 for $300.
2. You have a choice of buying an i7 that pretends to be an i5 for $200, or an i7 for $300.
3. You have a choice of buying an i7 that pretends to be an i5 for $200, or an i7 for $300. If you pay $200, you can later for a payment of $100 turn it into an i7.
For me, choices (1) and (2) are identical, but choice (3) is without any doubt better. There is no situation where I am worse off than with choice 1 or 2, and in some situations I'm better off.
You left out one significant scenario:
4. You have a choice of buying an i7, that acts like an i7, for $200.
Choice (4) is clearly best for me as a customer.
For Intel, (4) isn't any worse than (2), as clearly they think they can make a profit selling i7s at $200. For (3) it's only worse to the extent of their conversion rate, probably well under 10%, minus the cost to lock the chip, or less than $10. For (1), they are apparently just overcharging by $90 - $100.
Don't you realise this is written by Intel and not some two-bit DRM-ware vendor? They could very well make it so these chips do the validtion on the CPU (therefore no bits in RAM that can be flipped) and make each CPU require a unique key. Doesn't mean it will be uncrackable, but it isn't the same as DRM, so I wouldn't count on it.