Some time back I was working at a company that made very popular cutting edge graphics software. Some of the key developers had beige-box machines labeled "Prop

Some time back I was working at a company that made very popular cutting edge graphics software. Some of the key developers had beige-box machines labeled "Property of Intel" and "Confidential". Inside were Intel motherboards populated with pre-release Pentium III CPUs - also etched "Intel Confidential". These were Katmai machines which the engineers were using to implement SSE instructions[1] in the software. So, yes, Intel does supply hardware to key developers. I have no idea what the criteria is, but next time, talk to your connections and see if your company or research group qualifies. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_SIMD_Extensions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_SIMD_Extensions