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It's often done for binning, but you also get working hardware that has been disabled. Many AMD CPUs have been unlockable with a reasonable success rate[1], and

It's often done for binning, but you also get working hardware that has been disabled. Many AMD CPUs have been unlockable with a reasonable success rate[1], and IIRC all of certain models of X800 GPUs could be upgraded from 12 to 16 pixel pipelines (which from memory was sold as the X800XL variant). I can see how in theory it might make sense for market segregation. Say you're designing a 2-core and a 4-core CPU - the design simplifications and manufacturing efficiencies of just making one chip (and partly disabling some of them) _might_ drive the price down for both market segments compared to manufacturing two designs, even if on the surface the 2-core user seems to be buying more hardware than they are given access to. With that in mind, SDS doesn't seem like such a bad idea. Buying an n-core chip that can later be upgraded to a 2n-core chip without buying a completely new part seems preferable in some ways to buying an n-core that is actually a 2n-core chip that has had half its cores laser-sliced off (and thus can never reasonably be reactivated) to fit a market need. [1] https://www.cpu-world.com/info/AMD/Unlocking_cores_and_L3.html https://www.cpu-world.com/info/AMD/Unlocking_cores_and_L3.ht...

anfilt 5y ago
The thing is with those disabled aspects of AMD gpus, AMD is not trying to sell it to you later. Also it could have been disabled because it was faulty when testing so binned differently or just to meet unit numbers for a SKU. Thing is you don't know. Here intel is selling you a pice of hardware but by telling you can pay later to unlock it. They are telling you it this extra functionality works. The thing is once intel sells a device they no longer own it. So what rubs a lot people wrongly here is that for something you own your now having to ask intel to use some aspect of it. For things you own you should not be asking 3rd parties for permission to use your property. If you are asking a 3rd party for permission do something/use something “you own”. This implies the seller has managed to retain some aspects of the right of exclusion. The issue here is the sell of tangible property normally involves the transfer of all rights. If the seller wants to retain some rights normally a contract is needed. Now with this situation intel using a couple things to basically retain this right of exclusion. First cryptography since you don’t have the private keys anything controlled by those keys intel effectively controls. Second is software copyright. A type of intangible property were the right to copy/reproduce is by default legally retained unlike other forms of property. So any software tools to enable this additionally functionality intel can keep a tighter grasp legally on its reproduction. Anyways the short and sweet if your having to ask the seller for permission after the sell to do something with something you “own” it implies the seller is some how retaining some property rights. This is going to rub people wrongly for tons of reasons.

anfilt 5y ago

The thing is with those disabled aspects of AMD gpus, AMD is not trying to sell it to you later. Also it could have been disabled because it was faulty when testing so binned differently or just to meet unit numbers for a SKU. Thing is you don't know. Here intel is selling you a pice of hardware but by telling you can pay later to unlock it. They are telling you it this extra functionality works. The thing is once intel sells a device they no longer own it. So what rubs a lot people wrongly here is that for something you own your now having to ask intel to use some aspect of it. For things you own you should not be asking 3rd parties for permission to use your property. If you are asking a 3rd party for permission do something/use something “you own”. This implies the seller has managed to retain some aspects of the right of exclusion. The issue here is the sell of tangible property normally involves the transfer of all rights. If the seller wants to retain some rights normally a contract is needed. Now with this situation intel using a couple things to basically retain this right of exclusion. First cryptography since you don’t have the private keys anything controlled by those keys intel effectively controls. Second is software copyright. A type of intangible property were the right to copy/reproduce is by default legally retained unlike other forms of property. So any software tools to enable this additionally functionality intel can keep a tighter grasp legally on its reproduction. Anyways the short and sweet if your having to ask the seller for permission after the sell to do something with something you “own” it implies the seller is some how retaining some property rights. This is going to rub people wrongly for tons of reasons.