when you think of upgrading a component in your pc you probably think of something pretty
straightforward take out the old one insert the new one and
then just carry on computing as usual with better performance
but unsurprisingly companies have
long schemed to sell us upgrades by making us pay again
for stuff we already have just ask anyone who's ever purchased a
tesla but did you know that Intel was actually guilty of this not too long ago
and that they might be doing it again back in 2010 Intel launched a program
called Intel upgrade service and it might sound like they'd send someone out
to your house to swap out the CPU but no
what it actually entailed was the user paying extra money after they bought the
pc to unlock certain capabilities of the processor
originally if you had a system that came with a pentium installed you could pay
50 bucks to buy an upgrade card which kind of looked like a gift card from a
major electronics store the card had a pin on it that you'd
enter on your pc which would enable additional cash on the CPU that was
already there as well as turn on hyper threading effectively turning the pen dm into a
slightly lower clocked core i3 with a few other cpus added to the
program later on needless to say
this did not sit well with a lot of tech industry observers some saw it as a
blatant money grab and that isn't surprising because that's
kind of what it is there's just something about paying more to unlock a
product you already physically have
that intuitively doesn't sit well with a lot of people i mean a heated seat
subscription really others weren't quite
as upset but pointed out that just buying a core i3 was
only 15 more than one of the pentiums that were supported by the program
but to be fair to Intel the program was aimed at folks who were buying lower end
pcs many of which were laptops with cpus that were permanently soldered in
those customers may have wanted to upgrade later
when they could afford it instead of buying a whole new machine but
regardless of whatever Intel's intentions were the
program was never very popular especially considering the upgrades were
tied to a specific motherboard making moving an upgraded CPU to a new system a
pain and the program was discontinued a year later in 2011
but could it be making a comeback Intel recently announced a new program
called software-defined silicon an undoubtedly
fancier name than upgrade service but it's a relatively similar scheme for
xeon processors in case you aren't familiar xeon is
Intel's workstation server and data center CPU line and team blue really
tries to sell the scalability aspect of xeon
in other words xeon cpus are supposed to easily handle significant workload
increases whether it's through running more virtual machines or simply adding
more processors to a multi-socket board with machine learning becoming more and
more important Intel is touting xeon's flexibility as ai becomes more complex
so it would make sense at least from a business perspective for Intel to try
and sell upgrades for xeon that you could just unlock with additional money rather than
having to go out and buy more silicon and send someone down a long hallway and
crack open a server and it's just too much work
but why are they doing it now well
Intel is building quite a few new chip fabs and
getting into an entirely new product lineup discreet gpus
and those things cost money
going to this quasi subscription model for some of their cpus
brings Intel a more consistent revenue stream than just the processor sales
themselves not to mention it's cheaper to just make one model of a product and
have the buyer pay for a built-in feature later if they want it
economy of scale but it still isn't clear exactly when we
might see xeons with software-defined silicon hitting the market
nor is it clear if this kind of program will rear its ugly head again in the
consumer-oriented CPU market but with so much of the tech world
moving into the by now
pay forever model it might not be the most
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