Intel charges customers to "unlock" CPU features

Licensing?

The difference here is that with software, you're buying a licence to use that software. Hence different licenses can easily allow for different features.

For CPUs, it's a different situation as you're outright buying a physical product. Would it therefore be illegal for a third party to create a workaround for this system that unlocks this functionality without the cost? After all, all they'd be doing is allowing you to use the full capabilities of the product you'd bought.

I don't recall hacks that allow you to unlock disabled graphics pipelines or to unlock the multipliers of CPUs as being illegal anyway and they just do the similar thing of enabling functionality which has been deliberately disabled by the manufacturer.

Either way, it's an interesting one!

By Trippynet on 20 Sep 2010

IBM

Thought they already did something similar to this with their mainframe products - whereby you can pay a bung and switch on extra processing capacity in an already installed product?

By 959ARN on 20 Sep 2010

Mainframes have been doing this for decades.

@959ARN -yes it's pretty much a standard feature of mainframes. Back in the 70's an Amdahl V7 mainframe cost $2M more than a V6, we built them all as V7's and then detuned them before shipping. When the customer ran out of steam they could get a field upgrade which was a board swap and a little extra cache memory.
Today on the IBM system Z the same processor card is over 4x as expensive if you use it to run Z/os than if it runs Linux.

By milliganp on 20 Sep 2010

Screw you Intel

....well, next thing you know they'll be telling you you DON't actually own the CPU and you ARE just licensing it.

Here's my simple workaround - BUY AMD

By pauld1024 on 20 Sep 2010

@Trippynet

Quote - Would it therefore be illegal for a third party to create a workaround for this system that unlocks this functionality without the cost?

Yes, look at how Sony took that Australian company to court for producing and selling USB devices with the debug trigger for PS3 consoles. The debug trigger allows unsigned code to run on the Cell processor, thereby opening the door to so called 'homebrew' development, or indeed, for piracy. Sony won and the courts forced them into handing over all the USB devices because they held Sony owned code, even though they came up with the code themselves!

By Heliosphan on 22 Sep 2010

End of Intel processors!

This will be the end of intel as a leading processor manufacturer as any one who wants to change processor settings will buy other processors and upgrade for Free1

By cjs88 on 23 Sep 2010

Uncertain future

I agree with Trippynet, very interesting.

When mainframes are sold it usually involves a contract and part of that contract is for support. I can imagine that a mainframe supplier would refuse to support a mainframe that had been hacked by a third party to unleash the extra processing power available.

However when you buy a physical product there is no contract to sign. Therefore if the knowledge to hack the product is available, who is able to stop you?
Fitting a custom exhaust to your car to unleash those extra 10 horses is not illegal.
Fitting a custom ECU to remap the fuel and ignition in your car is not illegal. Anyone who managed to hack their camcorders to re-enable the external recording ability, the list is endless.

Plenty of ammunition if Intel took someone to court.

By S_Elwell on 23 Sep 2010

Tresure Island

Now that CPU's are to be licences, does this mean we will pay double what the yanks do for the same code?

By dave_mcmahon on 23 Sep 2010

Warranty

It's surely simple. Buying the upgrade from Intel maintains your warranty. Hacking it (just as with overclocking) in theory gives you the same product, but with no manufacturer warranty.

By sexyjw on 24 Sep 2010

Watchguard...

...Firewalls sell ranges of firewalls, with different specs. The hardware is the same, but buying a licence upgrade increases both software features, and releases memory and processor speed.

This simplifies upgrades and makes them cheaper. It also saves waste, as old hardware is not discarded.

If you can buy a processor that has feature set A at £x (which fits in your budget), but know that, should you want to upgrade to feature set B later, you can do so without replacing the entire processor, and for considerably less money, why wouldn't you buy the CPU?

I'm sure Intel will have considered the possibility that the upgrade may be cracked, and either believe it is unlikely to happen, or too complex or expensive (bearing in mind the real cards only cost $50) to make it worthwhile,

By rabigo on 26 Sep 2010