Then I guarantee you that there is an MBA in Intel somewhere crunching the numbers and calculating that "only 0.001% of our customers are utilising this feature

Then I guarantee you that there is an MBA in Intel somewhere crunching the numbers and calculating that "only 0.001% of our customers are utilising this feature", hence he's going to cut that team and stop offering the product in future Xeons. Which means that any fool that did utilise this feature has tied their cart to a horse that's going to be put down. Smarter people can see this coming a mile off and not bother investing any effort into support. It's so predictable that it's just depressing.