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It was never advertised, and Intel very specifically said AVX-512 instructions will not be available. Some motherboard manufacturers made them available anyway,

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
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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.
jacquesm 5y ago
> now Intel is fixing that That's not a fix. That's a disabling. A fix repairs something.
- protastus 5y ago
  If AVX-512 was not in scope yet left turned on, parts may operate outside design limits, there's system-level validation that may not have been run, and specs that are at risk. Think about the scale of all PC OEMs that use these CPUs, rather than a specific product. For example, it's known that AVX-512 is power hungry and significantly increases TDP (heat). Do all Alder Lake based products have the thermal headroom? If CPUs operate outside of the envelope communicated by Intel, they may not be entirely stable, and parts could fail earlier than expected.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Bringing a product in line with specification is very much fixing it. Even if the fix happens to be disabling something.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Yes, but once it has shipped and people may have come to depend on it it will break stuff, not fix stuff. Besides the obvious benefit of first having benchmarks out there claiming these chips are better than they really are. So this change just benefits Intel, and nobody else. If it would be a fix then it would be that something that was advertised did not work, and now it does.
    - Someone 5y ago
      > Yes, but once it has shipped and people may have come to depend on it it will break stuff, not fix stuff. That may apply to every change, including things everybody agrees on to be bug fixes. If, for example, you improve the number of correctly returned bits for computing sin, that can break programs, for example games that want to keep world models in exact sync across systems. From what I read here, intel didn’t advertise this feature and it wasn’t easily discovered. If so, I don’t think customers have any claim against Intel for the CPUs. _If_ motherboard vendors advertised/promoted it (could be as simple as blogging about it), I would think people who bought a motherboard because it allows activating this feature will have a case against them (in the EU and possibly elsewhere, the seller is responsible for the product being fit for purpose, not the manufacturer, so it would be the seller, but let’s ignore that) Legally, there also is the issue who applies that update. From what I read, that’s the motherboard. Here again, I would say that, if customers have a case, it would be against whomever sold them the motherboard (e.g. if that silently applies the update) I don’t see any indication that Intel, as a CPU manufacturer, forces existing customers to install this.
adrian_b 5y ago
Intel very specifically said that AVX-512 instructions will not be available only a few weeks before the Alder Lake launch. While it cannot be said that Intel advertised AVX-512 for Alder Lake, at all previous disclosures it was said that the Golden Cove cores have AVX-512 and the Gracemont cores do not have it. It was clearly said that in hybrid configurations AVX-512 will be disabled, because for Microsoft it is a too difficult task to implement scheduling on a system with heterogeneous cores. Whether AVX-512 can be enabled by disabling the Gracemont cores was not said, but everybody interpreted that saying nothing about this means that it will be possible to enable AVX-512, because Alder Lake is a replacement for Rocket Lake and Tiger Lake, both of which have AVX-512. This is one of a very few cases, if not the only case, when Intel replaced a CPU product without preserving backward software compatibility. If this was their intention from the beginning, then they certainly should have said it much earlier, not just immediately prior to launch.
- gambiting 5y ago
  >>Whether AVX-512 can be enabled by disabling the Gracemont cores was not said Reading up on it, I was under the impression that's exactly how it worked, no? If you disable the efficiency cores in BIOS, the enable AVX-512 option would appear on selected few motherboards. You can't have all cores enabled and keep AVX-512 enabled at the same time.
  - adrian_b 5y ago
    This was possible on most motherboards at launch. Now however, Intel has issued a BIOS update that no longer allows enabling AVX-512 when the Gracemont cores are disabled. The motherboards produced from now on will have the new BIOS version. Keeping the original BIOS on the existing Alder Lake motherboards is not a good choice, because the new BIOS version also improves stability in certain memory configurations.
solarkraft 5y ago
Not sure how others do it, but I don't only buy products based on advertisements, but rather by the actual properties the product has. But it's not like this changes anything legally. Products get worse due to software changes all the time (especially through cloud services shutting down) and as far as I know there haven't been any successful lawsuits about it.
antman 5y ago
Good example. It’s like buying a car and finding out it has a nice radio that was not advertised. After a few months the car dealership sends someone to break into the car and rip it off. Fair enough since it wasn’t advertised, right?
- gambiting 5y ago
  Well, breaking into your car is still illegal, so no, not fair enough. More like you buy a car without paying for a satellite radio(or that feature isn't advertised and isn't in the spec sheet), and then that feature gets removed next time you bring the car in for service. That is absolutely fine.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Based on the lawsuit about Tesla removing features from a used car it seems like it's not fine.

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.

jacquesm 5y ago

> now Intel is fixing that That's not a fix. That's a disabling. A fix repairs something.

protastus 5y ago
If AVX-512 was not in scope yet left turned on, parts may operate outside design limits, there's system-level validation that may not have been run, and specs that are at risk. Think about the scale of all PC OEMs that use these CPUs, rather than a specific product. For example, it's known that AVX-512 is power hungry and significantly increases TDP (heat). Do all Alder Lake based products have the thermal headroom? If CPUs operate outside of the envelope communicated by Intel, they may not be entirely stable, and parts could fail earlier than expected.
gambiting 5y ago
Bringing a product in line with specification is very much fixing it. Even if the fix happens to be disabling something.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Yes, but once it has shipped and people may have come to depend on it it will break stuff, not fix stuff. Besides the obvious benefit of first having benchmarks out there claiming these chips are better than they really are. So this change just benefits Intel, and nobody else. If it would be a fix then it would be that something that was advertised did not work, and now it does.
  - Someone 5y ago
    > Yes, but once it has shipped and people may have come to depend on it it will break stuff, not fix stuff. That may apply to every change, including things everybody agrees on to be bug fixes. If, for example, you improve the number of correctly returned bits for computing sin, that can break programs, for example games that want to keep world models in exact sync across systems. From what I read here, intel didn’t advertise this feature and it wasn’t easily discovered. If so, I don’t think customers have any claim against Intel for the CPUs. _If_ motherboard vendors advertised/promoted it (could be as simple as blogging about it), I would think people who bought a motherboard because it allows activating this feature will have a case against them (in the EU and possibly elsewhere, the seller is responsible for the product being fit for purpose, not the manufacturer, so it would be the seller, but let’s ignore that) Legally, there also is the issue who applies that update. From what I read, that’s the motherboard. Here again, I would say that, if customers have a case, it would be against whomever sold them the motherboard (e.g. if that silently applies the update) I don’t see any indication that Intel, as a CPU manufacturer, forces existing customers to install this.

adrian_b 5y ago

Intel very specifically said that AVX-512 instructions will not be available only a few weeks before the Alder Lake launch. While it cannot be said that Intel advertised AVX-512 for Alder Lake, at all previous disclosures it was said that the Golden Cove cores have AVX-512 and the Gracemont cores do not have it. It was clearly said that in hybrid configurations AVX-512 will be disabled, because for Microsoft it is a too difficult task to implement scheduling on a system with heterogeneous cores. Whether AVX-512 can be enabled by disabling the Gracemont cores was not said, but everybody interpreted that saying nothing about this means that it will be possible to enable AVX-512, because Alder Lake is a replacement for Rocket Lake and Tiger Lake, both of which have AVX-512. This is one of a very few cases, if not the only case, when Intel replaced a CPU product without preserving backward software compatibility. If this was their intention from the beginning, then they certainly should have said it much earlier, not just immediately prior to launch.

gambiting 5y ago
>>Whether AVX-512 can be enabled by disabling the Gracemont cores was not said Reading up on it, I was under the impression that's exactly how it worked, no? If you disable the efficiency cores in BIOS, the enable AVX-512 option would appear on selected few motherboards. You can't have all cores enabled and keep AVX-512 enabled at the same time.
- adrian_b 5y ago
  This was possible on most motherboards at launch. Now however, Intel has issued a BIOS update that no longer allows enabling AVX-512 when the Gracemont cores are disabled. The motherboards produced from now on will have the new BIOS version. Keeping the original BIOS on the existing Alder Lake motherboards is not a good choice, because the new BIOS version also improves stability in certain memory configurations.

solarkraft 5y ago

Not sure how others do it, but I don't only buy products based on advertisements, but rather by the actual properties the product has. But it's not like this changes anything legally. Products get worse due to software changes all the time (especially through cloud services shutting down) and as far as I know there haven't been any successful lawsuits about it.

antman 5y ago

Good example. It’s like buying a car and finding out it has a nice radio that was not advertised. After a few months the car dealership sends someone to break into the car and rip it off. Fair enough since it wasn’t advertised, right?

gambiting 5y ago
Well, breaking into your car is still illegal, so no, not fair enough. More like you buy a car without paying for a satellite radio(or that feature isn't advertised and isn't in the spec sheet), and then that feature gets removed next time you bring the car in for service. That is absolutely fine.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Based on the lawsuit about Tesla removing features from a used car it seems like it's not fine.