"The ME/PSP are instrumental in the boot process; modern multi-core CPUs are complicated to initialise and these chips generally need substantial initialisation

"The ME/PSP are instrumental in the boot process; modern multi-core CPUs are complicated to initialise and these chips generally need substantial initialisation before the main cores are ready to execute instructions. This role is not something put in there gratuitously out of malice to stop people removing it." Then they need to put something in that does that instead of always-on, networked backdoor you cant disable. There's a huge gap between what you described and what they're doing. They also used to build complex, custom CPU's without it. So, we know it's unnecessary from their prior products. I'd rather use the space for an extra core, a low-latency GC, TCP/IP offlad, etc. A lot of stuff people or companies might pay for who didnt want or use ME. The enterprises that want ME can buy chips with it.