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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."
but if it does, it's a big opportunity for AMD. Of course, odds are it'll get cracked at some point and we'll be able to grab an "Intel Upgrade Service Crack" torrent.
Presumably Intel will be using the CPU serial number to keep track of legitimate users and so forth. But here it comes: have we bought a central processing unit which has now become our property because we paid for it, or are we simply buying a "license" to use Intel's "intellectual property"? If I go out and buy a penknife, I don't expect to have to pay more money if I want to be able to use the built-in compass. Will the BSA (or some similar organization) come down on companies that unlock their processors without paying Intel's upgrade fee? This has the potential to get ugly.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It would be relatively simple for the BIOS to turn off CPU features in such a way that they can't be turned back on without a reset. So the easy way to implement this would be for Intel to partner with a PC vendor and charge for the BIOS upgrade that doesn't disable the CPU features in question. With such a system, it would mean that you could pull the CPU and put it in a different motherboard, and get all the features, but that's not going to be a concern for the business model until they're talking about hundreds of dollars for the added features.
Putting this into the CPU would require that the CPUs be designed specifically to support this, which is not as likely to be the case, but would be much more difficult to defeat.
Don't let the marketing get to you, and do not encourage it.
If you are shopping for processors, simply disregard the "upgrades" and treat the product accordingly. Does it compare with fully unlocked competitors?
No? Then don't buy it. Yes? Then buy it but don't upgrade.
Sometimes it is harder to get an OEM computer to use AMD (like apple) but according to AMD's website: Powering ultrathin notebooks to blade servers, all AMD processors shipped are designed to use AMD-V features. Where as Intel has been a little less free and more cumbersome. For instance most Atom processors by Intel do not support virtualization but all shipping AMD (and it has been a while) do. Also computer models such as the sony viao (undercapitalized for a reason) use the "feature" provided by Intel to disallow virtualization through the BIOS, meaning that you have to turn in on before booting. Along with other technology that AMD has developed makes you wonder why Intel is so dominant in the space. So for an informed geek, switching to AMD was already a good move, if only the manufacturers would follow.
Society use your Sciences
How come the software to "unlock" this capability appears to be windows only?
da w00t. mtfnpy?
Pirated or jailbroken, that is one CPU I will not buy. Intentionally holding a gun to the customer's head by crippling the device until you pay a ransom is not a way to get my business.
"Currently, CPU upgrades are available on selected Windows 7 systems."
It installs the application. Does it run every time your computer boots? Does that mean the unlock isn't permanent? If I pay to unlock the chip, and then reboot into Linux, is the CPU still unlocked? If I have to reinstall Windows, do I have to reinstall (or re-purchase) the upgrade?
No thanks...
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
You know... Intel being the CPU manufacturer, could make this really robust. Each CPU already gets stamped with a unique serial number. They could stamp each one with a unique unlock code that goes with the serial number, as well.
Then the only way to 'unlock' the function would be to go through Intel, so they would look up your specific CPU's unlock code in the database.
That's impossible to pirate, because there's no way you can share the code. As long as they assure the unlock code is the only mechanism allowed to re-enable the capabilities, and there is no BIOS mechanism to override the lock.
Is this some kind of flash update or os based?
So will it be $50 per os reload?
Will you be able to buy it one time and make a image and mass deploy it?
Will Linux just auto unlock the cpu?
Will some MB auto unlock the cpu?
That's a bit different. They disabled a chip, and sold you the board. You could turn it on if you wanted - with no guarantee that it'd actually work. They do the same with multi-core CPUs. They build em all with X cores, during QA, if one of the cores fails a test, they'll just disable the core, and sell it as X-1.You're perfectly free to try and re-enable your disabled core - but there's a chance it won't work. They can't sell them as X-core processors, because they can't guarantee all cores will work.
This, on the otherhand, is them selling you a piece of hardware with functionality *that they know is 100% functional* (or they wouldn't be able to offer the upgrade) and are trying to make you pay for what you already own.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Packard Bell used to do something similar.
my first 486 system I bought back in the early 90s came in two flavors: the SX version and the DX version.(For those that dont remember, the DX had a math coprocessor, the SX didnt.)
It was about a $50 difference in price between the two models, and so I bought the cheaper one.
One day I was skimming the manual looking for a motherboard jumper and found a cryptic note for "J12 1-2 SX/2-3 DX). On a whim I swapped the jumper.
Whadda ya know! suddenly my bios reported DX processor.
Apparently it was cheaper to build one box, then apply a case sticker/jumper setting to differentiate the two.
makes perfect sense really.
Didn't Intel processors have a unique ID at one time?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
But this is backwards. In the sane world, the reason why paying less gets you less is because the cheaper product was cheaper to make. Not only is their locked down product not cheaper to make, but it's actually making the whole line more expensive. Some of our dollars are actually going towards the developers for the purpose of making the product worse, by locking it down.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
My first impression was "whoa - Gateway is still in business."
After that though, yeah. Dumb idea all the way around. They're going to get such a roasting over this. Viral Youtube videos, blog crusaders polluting every tech forum and newsgroup with this one issue, the full Tonight Show treatment. The hate that this spawns will be worth far less than all the money it could possibly bring in.
And then of course comes the question: if ideas this bad come to market, who's running the ship up there? And then the stock takes a hit.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This isn't the same thing, though - these are perfectly good chips that are crippled so that Intel doesn't have to manufacture chips at multiple price points. Maybe their reject rate has dropped enough that it's not a viable way to get lower-performance chips.
Pirated or jailbroken, that is one CPU I will not buy. Intentionally holding a gun to the customer's head by crippling the device until you pay a ransom is not a way to get my business.
I completely agree. This 'method' of doing business has been going on for a long time in the digital spectrometer world and mainframe world. I find it revolting and for the period when I had some decision power on what was being purchased I made it very clear to vendors that I would never consider their equipment for that very reason. Fortunately (for them), I'm back to lowly coder now.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
This is not as bad as it looks. In fact, this could be real good for the Customers. This model will allow me to pay less for a machine when I don't need that much performance. If the performace is not meeting my needs, then I may use the upgrade card and increase the life of my machine. I don't see why folks here are making big deal out of it. How is software upgrade different from hardware upgrade? Even Microsoft and Apple do the same where they charge different price for different features and technically charge less for features by disabling some. So I think software and hardware upgrades are analgous. I actually like that Intel is thinking out of the box and trying to do something different. This only means better and more options for the Customer.
...if they provide me with a code or utility to disable hyperthreading.
Hyperthreading is killing my VM hosts and new servers do not have the "Disable Hyperthreading" in BIOS.
One thing nobody's talking about is why Intel is doing this.
The only reason I can imagine is that they're sitting on some technology that will greatly reduce fabrication flaws, which means that far more chips will be coming out of their factories that are capable of running at full specification than the market wants.
That, or they're already outputting a high percentage of chips that are capable of running at higher rates, and disabling them - a much higher percentage than they used to be able to manage, if it makes sense to actually market these chips as upgradeable.
This could really muck up the depreciation cost of IT data centers.
Intel has to have run some financial models on this to go this direction.
Is the $50 unlock going to depreciated or be full cost 3 years after the initial sale?
If I got a racks that we don't have to have a pull and replace with current CPUs but could get another 1 -2 years by unlocking them I'm going to get a note from the comptroller for not choosing to spend the really low unlock cost but instead going with upgrades which will be higher.
Next will the unlock transfer?
That would really bite if it was non-transferable unlock / license.
This would also be important when a CPU does go casters up and is replaced with a like unit. Would the unlock follow the specific CPU package or the customer installation? Doing any kind of "credit" tracking is a nightmare financially and for license compliance.
Second hand sales are also a potential problem.
Anyhow I also see Viking and/or SDD makers also doing this stuff with the wacky great Sata DIMM. How many more circuits needed to unlock 1TB RAM drawn from SDD rather than the base 32 GB they sold you a license for.
Non mainframe datacenters have had "unlockable" storage upgrades for almost over decade (IE tape libs), its almost time for unlockable, SDD, CPU & SDD/SATA memory upgrades.
You know that you probably bought a handicapped chip already, right?
Of course, but that's not the point. As the OP said, it's about PERCEPTION. Most people don't really think about (or even know about for many consumers) the fact that their CPU may be a downscaled version of another one. If you offer to "unlock" those disabled features for a price though, then it's a firm slap in the face reminding you that this chip most assuredly is just arbitrarily limited.
Consider it like a John visiting a prostitute. Most of them know that the prostitute is only sleeping with him for money, and they're ok with that in the back of their mind, but they certainly don't want to be reminded of that fact the whole time.
Or consider when World of Warcraft came out: in an effort to reduce excessive playtime, developers built in a "fatigued" mechanic. As long as you rested at an inn your character would return to normal, but eventually if you gained too much XP without letting your fatigue wear off you started gaining XP at half the normal rate. There was public outcry. So, rather than changing the mechanic AT ALL, Blizzard changed the wording so that instead of the extended play time XP being "halved", IT was renamed to the normal rate and the other state was renamed from normal to "rested" and the claim was that you get DOUBLE the XP in that state. Numerically identical, but the community accepted this version pretty well because the prospect of a reward that builds over time was more palatable than a penalty that decreases with time, even if they might work out the same.
Presentation of the situation is as important as the details of the situation.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain