Subscription based CPU?

[PeachGr]

Summary

 Intel's Pay-As-You-Go CPU Feature!
Intel will soon add the ability to "buy" extra features to their already bought CPU. The so called feature, if my understanding is correct, affects only Sapphire Rapids, that is the server line up.
The features will probably be about Memory Support, Network Function Virtualization and more that are on the article, but i won't go to the techical terms, because i 'm not an expert on that

 

 

Quotes

Quote

Intel's mysterious Software Defined Silicon (SDSi) mechanism for adding features to Xeon CPUs will be officially supported in Linux 5.18, the next major release of the operating system. SDSi allows users to add features to their CPU after they've already purchased it. Formal SDSi support means that the technology is coming to Intel's Xeon processors that will be released rather shortly, implying Sapphire Rapids will be the first CPUs with SDSi.

 

Intel hasn't disclosed what exactly it plans to enable using its pay-as-you-go CPU upgrade model.

virtually none of Intel's customers need all the supported features, which is why Intel has to offer specialized models

 

My thoughts

 Intel's point of view,s is that not all customers need all the mentioned (on the article) features, so that way they can reduce the cost per unit
My point of view is:
1) Reminds me of Tesla's heated seat/ autonomous drive, that is a hardware in there, but the manufacturer is holding it behind a subscription (Yes other car manufacturesrs do this as well on their navigation, and other networkings like Peugeot but people know Tesla's scandals better)
2) I hate when companies label you as a customer.
Taking me as an example, i bought a 2060 super for gaming, later i did some game recordings, then video editing, and now 3D modeling and animation, and Nvidia provided studio drivers to support my different workloads for free!
Server market is way different that a consumer's one, so i guess it won't affect the customers immediately, but in the long run, many Xeon CPU were repurposed as a pro-sumer product
Also. The trend of subscription on everything, will maybe start affect the consumer CPU market if it goes well for intel
(on and off topic)
The memes of course started to fly around for example:
Your i9's CPU subscription ended, you are back on 2 cores. With 20$ you can enable the rest of them for a month
But i hope that will remain a bad meme

Sources

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-software-defined-cpu-support-coming-to-linux-518

[Akolyte]

The only way I can see this working out well is if they reduce the price of their CPUs with these features disabled, or they offer a subscription option where customers don't actually buy these processors outright but rent them essentially. 

 

I can see vendors like HPE and Dell eating this up and adding their own markup for enabling features in their contractual agreements, maybe Intel wants a piece of this pay as you go trend with on-premises enterprise equipment that's been taking over the enterprise. 

 

HPE already does something (among other vendors) similar with their servers, they'll provide you with a fleet for a small flat fee fee but the price monthly will increase as server features are required (which are already there by the way, but just off-limits), and as capacity is used. 

 

Except, it looks like Intel is just making this the norm on some of their processors.   I just hope that it will stay as an enterprise-only 'feature'. 

 

 

[Kilrah]

This is old news, was announced back in September.

 

 

There's a TQ on it:

 

[GhostRoadieBL]

I am seeing the slippery slope down to subscription only overclocking, "unlocking" ram amounts soldered to the cpu, "unlock" pcie lanes

You want nvme and a gpu? That's $10/mo for 20lanes but the cpu is only $100 for 4cores.

 

 

[Akolyte]

2 hours ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

I am seeing the slippery slope down to subscription only overclocking, "unlocking" ram amounts soldered to the cpu, "unlock" pcie lanes

You want nvme and a gpu? That's $10/mo for 20lanes but the cpu is only $100 for 4cores.

 

 

I highly doubt this will reach the enthusiast space.  Perhaps the mainstream consumer space - like for very mainstream hardware, Surface Pro type stuff. 

 

But that's a long way off, it's just not cost-effective.  Besides, companies know that enthusiasts just won't tolerate this.  Remember, this isn't 2015, there is high competition in this space, and Intel or AMD know if they do something this lame it's going to damage their market share. 

 

In the server/enterprise space though, well, that's different.  Company's IT managers are looking at Intel  all starry eyed, because they've got a pricing model that integrates with them pretty well. 

[GhostRoadieBL]

36 minutes ago, Akolyte said:

But that's a long way off, it's just not cost-effective.  Besides, companies know that enthusiasts just won't tolerate this.  Remember, this isn't 2015, there is high competition in this space, and Intel or AMD know if they do something this lame it's going to damage their market share.

A lot of people said that when BMW did "optional add-ons" which normally were just different models, subscription based upgrades in some form will show up. Hopefully they stay enterprise side but even that is a competitive space with Epyc stealing market share from Xeon more each quarter and I really hope AMD doesn't pull something like this in that space. I think by the time this is mainstream we're looking at a different world anyway and the expanding normalization of subscription based population income control is already here, I don't want to see it show up on PC as well.

 

[mr moose]

Like with any product, if they start at a reasonable average price for said product with all features, then make it cheaper as you deduct options that is O.K.  But if they start at that same price and then by default remove all the options asking the client to pay more for those features then they can get stuffed.  I don't care that its only a commercial server end type thing,  extra costs are extra costs which ALWAYS filter down to the end consumer. 

 

Also I hate this new MO of companies to turn everything into a service,  it won't be long before you can't own anything.

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

Like with any product, if they start at a reasonable average price for said product with all features, then make it cheaper as you deduct options that is O.K.  But if they start at that same price and then by default remove all the options asking the client to pay more for those features then they can get stuffed.  I don't care that its only a commercial server end type thing,  extra costs are extra costs which ALWAYS filter down to the end consumer. 

 

Also I hate this new MO of companies to turn everything into a service,  it won't be long before you can't own anything.

As much as I want to make a point about current global politics, in the semiconductor space, look at IBM, Oracle or MSFT compared to Intel. None of those companies have to drop $15 Billion for a new Fab. They can use that money to buy other companies. Intel and AMD also are a small cost in the Per Socket pricing on a lot of Server software. This actually strikes me more as a way to limit resale values on a lot of parts rather than actually a direct cash grab.

[mr moose]

4 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

As much as I want to make a point about current global politics, in the semiconductor space, look at IBM, Oracle or MSFT compared to Intel. None of those companies have to drop $15 Billion for a new Fab. They can use that money to buy other companies. Intel and AMD also are a small cost in the Per Socket pricing on a lot of Server software. This actually strikes me more as a way to limit resale values on a lot of parts rather than actually a direct cash grab.

true, but at least oracle and MS have to keep buying parts from Intel if they want to keep growing their business.  Not really sure about IBM's structure anymore.  They kinda lost my interest decades ago.

[Elijah Kamski]

Can't wait for the Pay As You Go GPU in 2025.

It'll make it cheaper, that'll be the excuse they'll give you all XD

[RejZoR]

It's a stupid idea, because I damn well know this DRM garbage will bring problems like CPU suddenly losing features because something won't be supported by something something and it'll fail. Just like DRM has done every single god damn time new OS was released or new CPU like Alder Lake was released. And we know how that usually ends up. Installing illegal software so you can use your god damn legally purchased goods. Thanks, but no thanks.

[sof006]

How to push more customers away and into the hands of AMD 101....

[PeachGr]

55 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Installing illegal software so you can use your god damn legally purchased goods

Oh yeah. Download pirate content because removed from Netflix, using VPN to access Netflix full library, bit on CPU side it will be tricky

[S w a t s o n]

obligatory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Upgrade_Service

[PeachGr]

Well yeah, they are known to have services that you needed to pay for upgrading the warranty for overclock your "k" CPU etc

[Kisai]

On 2/11/2022 at 3:12 PM, GhostRoadieBL said:

I am seeing the slippery slope down to subscription only overclocking, "unlocking" ram amounts soldered to the cpu, "unlock" pcie lanes

You want nvme and a gpu? That's $10/mo for 20lanes but the cpu is only $100 for 4cores.

 

 

That's not what's going to happen.

 

One or both of these things will happen:

a) FPGA functionality (eg software-defined-in-hardware DRM), basically SGX but "fixable"

b) iGPU, BMC/Management, additional Network functionality, asset tracking in hardware (basically calling home without the OS knowing)

 

What I see happening is that Intel stops making "separate" dies for Xeon/Core models and the consumer "Core" models just don't get the option to unlock the Xeon functionality, but the Xeon's get the option to unlock the "Core" functionality, along with generally "optional" enterprise functionality that may be redundant. Asset tracking, BMC, and Network functionality is often already redundant in Dell systems, so you opt to "cut Dell out" of the picture if you have your own Intel-provided functionality. Which already happens when companies hire companies like IBM to do their IT management. IBM in turn outsources to companies that have no access to any of IBM's tools, and basically you're hiring IBM to do nothing more than use the on-chip functionality anyway.

 

To put this in another perspective, you might buy a motherboard for one of these chips that doesn't have 10Gbit ports, and thus you don't want to pay for the 10Gbit NIC functionality if you don't use 10Git functionality.

 

[GhostRoadieBL]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

That's not what's going to happen

That's the first step, it's the same as the auto industry going from one model per vehicle to multiple tiers (i3, i5, i7, i9) then to paid add-on extras (heated seats) but now 2 steps later we're seeing subscription add ons for almost everything on the vehicles and it starts at the hig-mid tier.

[Franck]

boost all core season pass anyone ?

[Kisai]

22 minutes ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

That's the first step, it's the same as the auto industry going from one model per vehicle to multiple tiers (i3, i5, i7, i9) then to paid add-on extras (heated seats) but now 2 steps later we're seeing subscription add ons for almost everything on the vehicles and it starts at the hig-mid tier.

The Auto-industry can also justify this in some regards, because making 15 models of CMU to support every trim level is kind of stupid when you get discounts for bulk purchases of the same item. So instead you build one CMU, and then have some firmware version that excludes the features the customer didn't pay for. If you stop paying for the feature, then the CMU calls home and soft-turns it off. You can't turn something on that's not in the firmware, but you can certainly turn things off.

 

Also, nothing stopping you from replacing the CMU or hacking the firmware. The dealership might not be happy about it and charge you for restoring the firmware if you break it.

 

However with computer chips, if the only thing that makes an i3, i7 or Xeon is a software blob on the cpu that turns off sections of the CPU, there's also nothing from having you turn it back on by hacking the microcode or management engine.  That said, SaaS can't work that way because there is no guarantee that the CPU will have access to whatever service is required to verify the chip, and various kinds of hidden-backdoor concerns will all but guarantee that the onboard NIC gets disabled and people go back to using USB NIC's that the CPU can't do hidden stuff to.

[Mark Kaine]

So "download more cores" is soon a reality?

 

Scammers will have a field day with that!  

 

[wseaton]

(Sigh)

 

Comments here are being made from the perspective of PC enthusiasts who are a miniscule segment of the computer industry, and shrinking.

 

Renting most of these hardware bits is already a thing in the virtualization space. Go price out an Azure VM. Yes, HaaS (hardware as a service) is alive and well.

 

The endpoint customer running software on these new architectures arent going to be paying for them. It will be the data center they are hosting in paying for them. Among other things Intel is likely aiming to keep the dwindling on prem yet deep in the pockets customer base happy. 

 

Still beats the 486SX approach. 

[AnonymousGuy]

Hey something I know something about!

 

The goal of SDSi is so you don't need 90000 SKUs for every major customer that wants to have one feature enabled or disabled or whatever.  So a customer doesn't have to pay for 256GB of SGX space if they only want 8GB.  Or they can go the other way and if they can only afford 8GB to start with they can eventually buy 256GB license.

 

It's basically a user-accessible soft fusing.  It is sticky to the cpu so you can move it to a different system or resell it or whatever and keep the same features.  It's not a subscription either it's a license.  You pay the money once and here's is your license file.

 

The "features" currently covered are shit that no one in the consumer space even cares about.  Like SGX size.

[Mark Kaine]

23 hours ago, wseaton said:

Comments here are being made from the perspective of PC enthusiasts who are a miniscule segment of the computer industry, and shrinking.

*SORRY I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER PAYING ALL THESE FEES JUST TO USE MY DAMN iGPU!!!*

 

23 hours ago, wseaton said:

hardware as a service