WEBVTT

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when you think of upgrading a component in your pc you probably think of something pretty

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straightforward take out the old one insert the new one and

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then just carry on computing as usual with better performance

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but unsurprisingly companies have

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long schemed to sell us upgrades by making us pay again

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for stuff we already have just ask anyone who's ever purchased a

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tesla but did you know that Intel was actually guilty of this not too long ago

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and that they might be doing it again back in 2010 Intel launched a program

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called Intel upgrade service and it might sound like they'd send someone out

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to your house to swap out the CPU but no

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what it actually entailed was the user paying extra money after they bought the

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pc to unlock certain capabilities of the processor

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originally if you had a system that came with a pentium installed you could pay

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50 bucks to buy an upgrade card which kind of looked like a gift card from a

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major electronics store the card had a pin on it that you'd

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enter on your pc which would enable additional cash on the CPU that was

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already there as well as turn on hyper threading effectively turning the pen dm into a

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slightly lower clocked core i3 with a few other cpus added to the

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program later on needless to say

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this did not sit well with a lot of tech industry observers some saw it as a

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blatant money grab and that isn't surprising because that's

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kind of what it is there's just something about paying more to unlock a

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product you already physically have

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that intuitively doesn't sit well with a lot of people i mean a heated seat

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subscription really others weren't quite

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as upset but pointed out that just buying a core i3 was

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only 15 more than one of the pentiums that were supported by the program

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but to be fair to Intel the program was aimed at folks who were buying lower end

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pcs many of which were laptops with cpus that were permanently soldered in

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those customers may have wanted to upgrade later

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when they could afford it instead of buying a whole new machine but

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regardless of whatever Intel's intentions were the

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program was never very popular especially considering the upgrades were

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tied to a specific motherboard making moving an upgraded CPU to a new system a

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pain and the program was discontinued a year later in 2011

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but could it be making a comeback Intel recently announced a new program

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called software-defined silicon an undoubtedly

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fancier name than upgrade service but it's a relatively similar scheme for

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xeon processors in case you aren't familiar xeon is

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Intel's workstation server and data center CPU line and team blue really

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tries to sell the scalability aspect of xeon

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in other words xeon cpus are supposed to easily handle significant workload

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increases whether it's through running more virtual machines or simply adding

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more processors to a multi-socket board with machine learning becoming more and

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more important Intel is touting xeon's flexibility as ai becomes more complex

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so it would make sense at least from a business perspective for Intel to try

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and sell upgrades for xeon that you could just unlock with additional money rather than

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having to go out and buy more silicon and send someone down a long hallway and

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crack open a server and it's just too much work

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but why are they doing it now well

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Intel is building quite a few new chip fabs and

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getting into an entirely new product lineup discreet gpus

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and those things cost money

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going to this quasi subscription model for some of their cpus

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brings Intel a more consistent revenue stream than just the processor sales

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themselves not to mention it's cheaper to just make one model of a product and

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have the buyer pay for a built-in feature later if they want it

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economy of scale but it still isn't clear exactly when we

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might see xeons with software-defined silicon hitting the market

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nor is it clear if this kind of program will rear its ugly head again in the

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consumer-oriented CPU market but with so much of the tech world

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moving into the by now

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pay forever model it might not be the most

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far-fetched thing thanks to brilliant for sponsoring this video brilliant is a

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