And they are planning to do it again https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-software-defined-cpu-support-coming-to-linux-518 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/

And they are planning to do it again https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-software-defined-cpu-support-coming-to-linux-518 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-software-defined-cpu... Now this time the idea is that because their differnt SKU's are basically the same chip under the hood anyway just locked at the Silicon level why not allow them to be unlocked if the extra features are found to be needed after purchase. This happen in other markets just fine. One market that jumps to mind is oscilloscopes, you will basically have a single piece of hardware spanning multiple skus where features are disabled via software/hardware (sometimes the CPU is just reading resistor values or jumpers to determine which model it is and therefore which features it has enabled), one notable vendor jumps to mind is Hantek. You can take a 70Mhz scope and opening it up to unlock it to 250mhz. (The same can be done in a number of Rigol scopes iirc)