
Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do (2010) - vishal0123
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50-to-unlock-stuff-your-cpu-can-already-d/
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adlpz
I assume this is being posted because something similar has been found on
Haswell, or whatever.

Complaining about this is just not knowing what is going on. Developing a
processor is a very complicated matter, and it's financially impossible to
develop several models for all the possible different performances. So they
just design and build the best possible device (with exceptions of course).

Now, I want a not-so-powerful device. Why should I pay the price of all the
R&D it took to squeeze the top performance? Maybe I just won't buy it because,
hey, it's too expensive.

On the other side, I want the top of the line. And Intel spent lots of money
developing it, in practice raising the price for everyone else. Shouldn't I be
made to pay more to compensate for that?

At the end of the day is a matter of creating artificial tiers so different
needs pay more or less of a share of the R&D and production cost. Something
similar happens when paying $100 for an upgrade from a 16GB to 32GB iPod. The
NAND Flash chip costs about $5, but I'm paying the premium of the extra
investment the company did, the additional supply chains, etc.

Of course this just is invisible to the customers most of the time, and this
'upgrade' cards make it obvious now. Anyone familiar with testing equipment
(oscilloscopes, etc...) will know that is a very common marketing technique.

~~~
gcp
The problem with Intel's tiers is that you can't even buy the top of the line
device: the concept doesn't exist due to the artificial market segmentation.

For Haswell, you can buy the 3.4Ghz one with TSX (4770), or the 3.5Ghz one
without TSX (4770K).

You cannot have the faster speed and TSX. Why? No reason. Well, someone at
Intel figured that people that want to have fast multithreaded software must
be business users that don't care about clockspeed. Or something. Don't ask
me, I think it's the most bonehead retarded thing ever.

~~~
adlpz
Maybe it's just that in that case the silicon won't support it, we don't
really know how the architecture is. It's also possible that it heats too much
with both things. Who knows.

Indeed it would be stupid not to offer something, just because. Charge $2000
for it and someone will buy it.

~~~
nitrogen
_Maybe it's just that in that case the silicon won't support it, we don't
really know how the architecture is._

Indeed it is conceivable that transactional extensions wouldn't work when the
clock multiplier is unlocked, but I can't yet imagine why.

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StewartTBF
Functionally, it seems like the logical combination of binning and the market
pressure for cheaper machines. (Binning->
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_binning>)

Say you are Intel and Gateway/Dell/OEM orders X lower-end CPUs... great.
However, you don't have enough that binned that far down. So, you have to
cripple some ones that are more capable. Do you write it off? No, offer a way
to have the end-user pay for the difference! Hey user, you want to unlock the
difference between what OEM paid for and what we happened to give them? Here's
a painless way to unlock it.

Functionally most of the electronics you buy are capable of more. Take a look
at this: [http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18/hack-removes-firmware-
crippli...](http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18/hack-removes-firmware-crippling-
from-nvidia-graphics-card/) Okay, so what happens? Either everything's great
and you got a free upgrade or the thing has a bad shader or memory chip and
now you have an unreliable card.

I don't agree with the whole up-sale aspect of it, but, it just strikes me as
Intel trying to make back some money on what likely was a crap deal for them.

~~~
nitrogen
_Functionally most of the electronics you buy are capable of more. Take a look
at this:[http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18/hack-removes-firmware-
crippli...](http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18/hack-removes-firmware-crippli..).
Okay, so what happens? Either everything's great and you got a free upgrade or
the thing has a bad shader or memory chip and now you have an unreliable
card._

Another thing you might see in a substantially similar hardware product line
is that resistors indicate the hardware model, but the lesser models are
missing essential components that are present in the higher models. Sure, the
firmware will think it's running on the higher model if you swap out the
resistors, but it'll promptly crash when it can't find that DAC and EEPROM
that are supposed to be there.

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Ives
This is also something that's often seen in oscilloscopes. For example, many
Agilent scopes can be upgraded by buying a key.

The impact for users is twofold. On the one hand users that don't upgrade
still have to pay for a few (unused) components. On the other hand, if users
decide they want to upgrade later on, they don't have to throw away/sell their
800$ scope or send it back to the factory. You can buy the basic model when
you have the money and upgrade later.

It might be a bit awkward to buy something you pretty much own already, but
it's still the most rational option.

If only humans were more rational...

~~~
joe_bleau
When Tektronix aged my 'scope out of support, the last free firmware update
unlocked all those extra cost firmware-locked upgrades. A real class act.

I wonder if Intel will do the same a few years down the road?

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mseebach
In raging over this practise, there's an unstated assumption: That the
alternative is selling the full, unlocked chip at the consumer price point.

This is very unlikely to be the case. Like first class on a flight, the
pricing of the high end is likely subsidising the lower end. Of course,
there's still a profit margin on the low end offering, just not enough that it
can stand on its own.

So the alternative to this practise is a cheaper high-end chip for everyone,
it's more expensive (or same price) high-end chips, which means the low end of
the market get's priced out and have to make do with last years model.

~~~
tracker1
Intel is not going to sell you any chip at a loss these days... Intel makes
money... they profit... loss-leaders don't give them that.

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seanalltogether
This is a weird concept and I'm trying to figure out how they intend to market
it. It seems to me that people buying cpus look for the best performance at
the right price, build the machine, and then 3 or 4 years later start the
process over again. They won't unlock the cpu right then and there unless it
fits within the price range, and they wont do it years later when they're
looking to upgrade their rig because they'll haven't forgotten or there will
be something much much better.

~~~
Spooky23
IBM has been doing this for Mainframes and pSeries/RISC boxes for a long time.
Other mainframes did this as well.

On the pSeries boxes, you buy a base level of CPU cores, and you can buy
licenses to unlock additional cores for a period of time. It gives you cloud-
ish type features (pay for what you need, when you need it) with on-premise
hardware.

It was a really common licensing model when "data processing" was all about
batch workloads. Now that we're building virtualized scale-out systems versus
client/server systems with fixed resource requirements, it's a model that can
make sense again. If you think about it, EC2 is another way of accomplishing
the same thing.

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timthorn
The 386SX and 386DX were exactly the same silicon, but the cheaper model had a
fuse deliberately blown to disable the maths coprocessor. It all comes down to
whether you take the view that you're buying a piece of silicon, or a slice of
R&D.

~~~
mjg59
No, that was the 486SX/DX. No 386s had built-in FPUs - the 386SX was a DX with
a 16-bit data bus and a 24-bit address bus.

~~~
timthorn
Bitrot in my brain... :)

~~~
sageikosa
I was _certain_ , but I still looked it up ;-). There's nothing like making a
mistake on Hacker News to show one how to eat humble pie.

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gnu8
So did this ever blow over or are these upgradable chips still on the market?
Did anyone ever hack the upgrade mechanism?

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kvb
This is known in the economics literature as product crimping. Perhaps
surprisingly, this can make everyone better off (not only Intel but also the
purchasers of both the crimped and uncrimped goods). See "Damaged Goods", by
Deneckere and McAfee [1].

[1]
[http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://www...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://www.econ.iastate.edu/faculty/langinier/teaching2005/615-fall2005/paper-
hom2/damagegoods.pdf&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm2DuFTO-d5ZF1R3RB3s1CNYNYp1VA&oi=scholarr)

~~~
tomjen3
The only thing I can see proof of here is that Intel is a monopoly, as they
wouldn't be able to get away with this if they were actually competing against
each other.

~~~
kvb
Did you read the paper? They cited a case where crimping occurred in printers
even though IBM and HP were competing. Also, ARM and AMD are producing chips,
even if they don't target the same subset of the market.

Regardless, the point is that by crimping Intel may be making themselves and
their customers better off. Sure, we could posit that with an even more
competitive chip market we'd be even better off, but that doesn't negate the
fact that we might be worse off than the status quo if crimping were
disallowed given the current competitive landscape.

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dbg31415
Everyone wants in on DLC, turns out... as much as we all complain about it, we
still hungrily buy it.

It's greedy, and douchey, but as long as they don't bring back the Celeron I'm
OK with them trying this.

It isn't the case that your average user today can tell the difference between
a computer that's brand new, or that's 4 years old. Chips aren't the
bottleneck anyway.

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greenyoda
Many software vendors do very similar things: by entering a different
registration key (that costs more money) you can unlock features of the
existing software that were previously unavailable to you.

For example, by entering a registration key, you can upgrade "Windows 7
Professional" to "Windows 7 Ultimate" and get more features. It only takes a
few moments to do, so it's clear that little or no additional software is
being installed on your machine.

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Havoc
Man AMD had better pull up its socks & provide some competition or there will
be much more of this nonsense in future.

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tomjen3
I don't really mind this, as all it means is that I have to download a program
of some torrent and -viola- better performance.

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Fuxy
It's failed model. If the hardware is there people will find a way to unlock
it without paying. Haven't license key proven that by now?

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jezfromfuture
Look if you guys are even goign to argue this is a good thign , ive already
given up the war on DLC has been lost and it was won by the stupid.

