6 ms·

Is this not the definition of bait and switch? How can this not end up in a lawsuit and investigation from regulatory bodies ?

MauranKilom 5y ago
This is an undocumented feature, from what I gather. So it's missing the "bait" part of "bait and switch".
- alophawen 5y ago
  The performance benchmarks of the Alder Lake is far from undocumented at this point.
  - detaro 5y ago
    You had to explicitly turn it on through hacks in the BIOS some motherboard makers added. If people enable a feature that's explicitly not supported on their benchmark rigs without disclosing it, that's not the vendors fault.
- jsnell 5y ago
  It's not even undocumented, but explicitly a documented as a feature those CPUs don't have. Originally it was supposed to be fused off physically, I wonder why it wasn't.
  - davidlt 5y ago
    It could be that decision to not support AVX512 was made very late in product development and thus early batches didn't have chicken bit disabled or/and fused it off. There might be gazillions of reason why this was done.
  - sodality2 5y ago
    To get the positive wave of initial reviews from people who enable it.
    - bee_rider 5y ago
      Who did this? Phoronix got AVX-512 working, but was very clear that this was unexpected and had a good chance of going away before release. If anything, this is a better test for your reviewers -- if a reviewer has published benchmarks using these unsupported features without mentioning it, you should keep that in mind when listening to their reviews in the future.
  - Cloudef 5y ago
    Easier to sell the same product twice just by flipping a bit in software
- dijit 5y ago
  I'm not sure if benchmarks that are out have the AVX-512 enabled or not. If they do then this is indeed fraud. They can always claim that those were engineering samples and not meant to be tested, but, I think they knew. But: that's assuming a lot. It's possible that the ES chips sent to reviewers also had AVX-512 disabled, and that benchmarks did not make use of the instruction anyway.
  - my123 5y ago
    > I'm not sure if benchmarks that are out have the AVX-512 enabled or not. No, because half the cores on those don't even have AVX-512 in the first place. (to enable AVX-512, you have to disable all the eCores) As such, running those systems with AVX-512 turned on was academic, but not practically used.
gambiting 5y ago
It was never advertised, and Intel very specifically said AVX-512 instructions will not be available. Some motherboard manufacturers made them available anyway, now Intel is fixing that. It's like buying a car with an advertised speed limiter of 155mph, then finding that actually it can go 170mph, and then the manufacturer fixes the speed limiter with a software update. Yes we know the car could go faster, but the speed limited version is the one that was actually advertised.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- josephcsible 5y ago
  This has nothing to do with advertisement. You should not be able to retroactively make products that you've already sold to people be less useful, whether or not the feature you're clawing back was advertised.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    I disagree completely. The product as sold wasn't compliant with its own technical spec sheet - now after the update it is. The feature isn't supported by that CPU and it should have never been exposed to the consumer. If you discovered that the CPU has 8 cores despite being sold as a 6 core, then removing 2 cores with a BIOS update wouldn't be "making the product less useful" either. It just makes the product exactly as specified in its technical documentation - and that is how it should be. Let me play a devil's advocate here - what if using the feature actually damages the processor after a while? AVX instructions always generate a tonne of heat. Maybe that's the reason why it was meant to be unsupported in the first place. Should Intel be allowed to fix the CPU and bring it in line with spec, or is that "making the product less useful"? Edit: also - Intel isn't forcing anyone to install this BIOS update. If you want to keep it with AVX instructions available, at the cost of disabling all efficiency cores - sure, keep it that way.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      > If you discovered that the CPU has 8 cores despite being sold as a 6 core, then removing 2 cores with a BIOS update wouldn't be "making the product less useful" either. Yes it would. > what if using the feature actually damages the processor after a while? Tell the owners this, and let them choose whether or not to take that risk. > Intel isn't forcing anyone to install this BIOS update. But then you'll be forever vulnerable to whatever the next variant of Spectre is. You can't cherry pick just the good parts of the update while excluding the bad parts.

MauranKilom 5y ago

This is an undocumented feature, from what I gather. So it's missing the "bait" part of "bait and switch".

alophawen 5y ago
The performance benchmarks of the Alder Lake is far from undocumented at this point.
- detaro 5y ago
  You had to explicitly turn it on through hacks in the BIOS some motherboard makers added. If people enable a feature that's explicitly not supported on their benchmark rigs without disclosing it, that's not the vendors fault.
jsnell 5y ago
It's not even undocumented, but explicitly a documented as a feature those CPUs don't have. Originally it was supposed to be fused off physically, I wonder why it wasn't.
- davidlt 5y ago
  It could be that decision to not support AVX512 was made very late in product development and thus early batches didn't have chicken bit disabled or/and fused it off. There might be gazillions of reason why this was done.
- sodality2 5y ago
  To get the positive wave of initial reviews from people who enable it.
  - bee_rider 5y ago
    Who did this? Phoronix got AVX-512 working, but was very clear that this was unexpected and had a good chance of going away before release. If anything, this is a better test for your reviewers -- if a reviewer has published benchmarks using these unsupported features without mentioning it, you should keep that in mind when listening to their reviews in the future.
- Cloudef 5y ago
  Easier to sell the same product twice just by flipping a bit in software
dijit 5y ago
I'm not sure if benchmarks that are out have the AVX-512 enabled or not. If they do then this is indeed fraud. They can always claim that those were engineering samples and not meant to be tested, but, I think they knew. But: that's assuming a lot. It's possible that the ES chips sent to reviewers also had AVX-512 disabled, and that benchmarks did not make use of the instruction anyway.
- my123 5y ago
  > I'm not sure if benchmarks that are out have the AVX-512 enabled or not. No, because half the cores on those don't even have AVX-512 in the first place. (to enable AVX-512, you have to disable all the eCores) As such, running those systems with AVX-512 turned on was academic, but not practically used.

gambiting 5y ago

It was never advertised, and Intel very specifically said AVX-512 instructions will not be available. Some motherboard manufacturers made them available anyway, now Intel is fixing that. It's like buying a car with an advertised speed limiter of 155mph, then finding that actually it can go 170mph, and then the manufacturer fixes the speed limiter with a software update. Yes we know the car could go faster, but the speed limited version is the one that was actually advertised.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
josephcsible 5y ago
This has nothing to do with advertisement. You should not be able to retroactively make products that you've already sold to people be less useful, whether or not the feature you're clawing back was advertised.
- gambiting 5y ago
  I disagree completely. The product as sold wasn't compliant with its own technical spec sheet - now after the update it is. The feature isn't supported by that CPU and it should have never been exposed to the consumer. If you discovered that the CPU has 8 cores despite being sold as a 6 core, then removing 2 cores with a BIOS update wouldn't be "making the product less useful" either. It just makes the product exactly as specified in its technical documentation - and that is how it should be. Let me play a devil's advocate here - what if using the feature actually damages the processor after a while? AVX instructions always generate a tonne of heat. Maybe that's the reason why it was meant to be unsupported in the first place. Should Intel be allowed to fix the CPU and bring it in line with spec, or is that "making the product less useful"? Edit: also - Intel isn't forcing anyone to install this BIOS update. If you want to keep it with AVX instructions available, at the cost of disabling all efficiency cores - sure, keep it that way.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > If you discovered that the CPU has 8 cores despite being sold as a 6 core, then removing 2 cores with a BIOS update wouldn't be "making the product less useful" either. Yes it would. > what if using the feature actually damages the processor after a while? Tell the owners this, and let them choose whether or not to take that risk. > Intel isn't forcing anyone to install this BIOS update. But then you'll be forever vulnerable to whatever the next variant of Spectre is. You can't cherry pick just the good parts of the update while excluding the bad parts.