News Intel Officially Introduces Pay-As-You-Go Chip Licensing

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Giroro

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Outrageous greed and an obvious security risk.

I don't often say "this should be illegal", but this should absolutely be illegal. It spits in the face of our basic human right to own the property that we buy.

Imagine buying a car that can disable your steering wheel whenever the car company arbitrarily decides they want more money.
 
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rluker5

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Not that I would want that in my chip at home, but if my town's phone company/local internet provider can save 10k in a year and lose nothing, good for them.

They just have to be clear about it so people know what they are buying.
 
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DSzymborski

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Outrageous greed and an obvious security risk.

I don't often say "this should be illegal", but this should absolutely be illegal. It spits in the face of our basic human right to own the property that we buy.

I'm not sure what legal theory, if any, is being espoused here. Intel's not trying to, unless I'm misreading the article, claw back things they've actually sold. They're offering the option to license you a CPU and if you enter into an agreement to license their property as a condition to obtain use of their property, one can hardly say that you now own it.
 

atomicWAR

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Not a fan of this move. I feel like this is a questionable and potentially damaging (trust wise) buisiness model. My trust certainly feels eroded in Intel. I understand this is all server level silicon but what happens if/when this trickles down to mainstream CPUs? Are we going to own our CPUs in the future or we going to only own a small subset of it functions forced to pay to fully utilize the CPUs we already paid for. A sad day for silicon.
 
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As long as it's limited to the accelerator units on the CPUs I don't particularly see a problem with this. They're not taking away anything from anyone as most of these haven't been on die before anyways. It is also undoubtedly a better use of company resources to limit the different silicon runs going through the fabs.

This behavior becomes a lot more problematic when they're disabling core parts of the CPU as they did in the past with "unlockable" desktop parts.
 
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Imagine buying a car that can disable your steering wheel whenever the car company arbitrarily decides they want more money.
Imagine buying hundreds of cars and then renting them out for a profit, but now you don't have to buy dozens of different models of cars because you have magic dust that turns any car into a convertible, SUV, 4x4, or whatever people like to rent.

These CPUs are for providers of server services not for end-users.
https://www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a00029675enw
 
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jkflipflop98

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Wow. This is absolute genius. You can pay for exactly what you need, no more and no less.

The rest of you jackwagons "oh Intel is going to take away your CPU cores" don't have a clue what you're talking about. I would suggest reading the article before racing down to the comments to declare something "illegal" before you even understand the situation.
 

jkflipflop98

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Not a fan of this move. I feel like this is a questionable and potentially damaging (trust wise) buisiness model. My trust certainly feels eroded in Intel. I understand this is all server level silicon but what happens if/when this trickles down to mainstream CPUs? Are we going to own our CPUs in the future or we going to only own a small subset of it functions forced to pay to fully utilize the CPUs we already paid for. A sad day for silicon.

Pretty ignorant viewpoint there, fella.

A better way of looking at it is that you can now buy a i7-13200 and at any point in the future you could pay the differential to unlock the chip up to a i7-13900k or even into i9 territory. Or if you're a content creator that wants to use QuickSync (which is awesome) you can throw down $35 and unlock the GPU on your chip forever. This is a win-win-win scenario all the way around for everyone.

The only time you'd "lose" any type of functionality is if you did the "lease" option on your upgrades. . . and in which case you know exactly what you're getting into. Think of MasterCard's transaction database. It gets hammered with 10x the normal amount of transactions between black friday and christmas. I bet they'd love to be able to take out a 3 month lease on 2x the compute power in their servers.
 
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I wonder about CPU pricing. They're not going to get cheaper because you don't use some functions. In fact they might become more expensive, since each an every version will have a full subset of accelerators or whatever. I don't see Intel becoming a good samaritain and hoping for people to buy the license at some point.

This is going to become intersting.
 

setx

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It doesn't sound so bad... for now! The main thing people are afraid (and absolutely rightfully so) is that that plague spreads beyond just obscure enterprise accelerators. Remember Intel cutting PCI-E lanes and AVX outside of top models?
 

jkflipflop98

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I wonder about CPU pricing. They're not going to get cheaper because you don't use some functions. In fact they might become more expensive, since each an every version will have a full subset of accelerators or whatever.

That's how it works anyways RIGHT NOW. There's a myriad of Intel processors, but very few actual production devices. On the consumer side, every model of I7 and I9 starts off as an I9-13900k with integrated GPU. Individual features are then disabled first if there's any yield issues, and then purposely to fill in the volume for the product stack. All your i7 and i9's physically house a Xe GPU, but they may be disabled to fit into a certain SKU.

Right now, that GPU is forever lost to you if you wanted to save money on a cheaper processor. But say you get big into streaming games, Intel QuickSync is the bee's knee's for encoding as it leaves your GPU completely untouched for running your games (and the quality is awesome). Right now in the current model you'd have to go out and buy an entirely new CPU to attain that functionality. With this new plan, you could simply pay Intel $50 or whatever and activate the one that's already in your system with a button click.
 

atomicWAR

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Pretty ignorant viewpoint there, fella.

A better way of looking at it is that you can now buy a i7-13200 and at any point in the future you could pay the differential to unlock the chip up to a i7-13900k or even into i9 territory. Or if you're a content creator that wants to use QuickSync (which is awesome) you can throw down $35 and unlock the GPU on your chip forever. This is a win-win-win scenario all the way around for everyone.

The only time you'd "lose" any type of functionality is if you did the "lease" option on your upgrades. . . and in which case you know exactly what you're getting into. Think of MasterCard's transaction database. It gets hammered with 10x the normal amount of transactions between black friday and christmas. I bet they'd love to be able to take out a 3 month lease on 2x the compute power in their servers.

I beg to differ and stand by my comment 100%. And from reading in here I can see opinion is shared by a fair number of other people.

Now Intel could stick to just accelerators for example but I find that unlikely in the long term. It could be something else innocous like turning a i7 into an i9. Or it could be much worse like I said prior where you only get a very base set of functions turning every cpu into an ala carte processing model. Time will tell where this goes.

I could be wrong and this might be the best thing ever... I just seriously doubt that is all. While I can see potential upsides in very limited use cases but if you can't see how this could be abused by Intel conversely, than I think you're being a tad bit naive. Have you forgot the AMD bulldozer years where Intel was happy to sell you 4 cores plus 5% every gen for infinitum abusing their market position at everyturn.

So yeah I am looking at Intel with a healthy dose if skeptisism and questioning their tactics until my fears are put to bed....or realized. But thats just my two cents.
 

Math Geek

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the problem here is simply the word "subscription" it is not in this article but was in the teaser announcement a week or so ago.

so this is simply not "pay for what you need" and then move on. this is "pay over and over and over for what you need to run your business after paying a premium for the chip itself"

if it was buy it once, pay for the options needed and move on. most would prob not have a problem with it.

at this point it is only server/data center type stuff. but as seen in the past it has 0% chance of staying there. give it a year or 2 and it will trickle down to consumer cpu's.

let's see how you folks calling it a good thing will feel when you have to buy your intel cpu and then have to pay EVERY MONTH for more than the base pcie lanes, that extra m.2 slot not gonna work without it. how about that extra L2/L3 cache that makes such a huge difference in your game?? sure the base 20 mb works fine, but you want all 64?? that's an extra $10 a month or more. like streaming?? well that feature set of encoders is gonna cost you another $20 a month.......

and so on and so on. the folks getting upset by this are the ones who are not sitting securely on their own shoulders and can see what is coming.

only got to look at other industries to see how stupid it can get. BMW's monthly subscription for those heated seats anyone????
 
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expunged

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Outrageous greed and an obvious security risk.

I don't often say "this should be illegal", but this should absolutely be illegal. It spits in the face of our basic human right to own the property that we buy.

Imagine buying a car that can disable your steering wheel whenever the car company arbitrarily decides they want more money.

It will only be for a short period of time. users will eventually figure out the port that everything works on and disable it. them figure out how to "open" access to all cores. after that intel will shut it down.
 
the problem here is simply the word "subscription" it is not in this article but was in the teaser announcement a week or so ago.

so this is simply not "pay for what you need" and then move on. this is "pay over and over and over for what you need to run your business after paying a premium for the chip itself"

if it was buy it once, pay for the options needed and move on. most would prob not have a problem with it.

at this point it is only server/data center type stuff. but as seen in the past it has 0% chance of staying there. give it a year or 2 and it will trickle down to consumer cpu's.

let's see how you folks calling it a good thing will feel when you have to buy your intel cpu and then have to pay EVERY MONTH for more than the base pcie lanes, that extra m.2 slot not gonna work without it. how about that extra L2/L3 cache that makes such a huge difference in your game?? sure the base 20 mb works fine, but you want all 64?? that's an extra $10 a month or more. like streaming?? well that feature set of encoders is gonna cost you another $20 a month.......

and so on and so on. the folks getting upset by this are the ones who are not sitting securely on their own shoulders and can see what is coming.

only got to look at other industries to see how stupid it can get. BMW's monthly subscription for those heated seats anyone????
The intel link is right in the article...
There are two models, one is activation where you pay ONCE to get what you pay for and one is consumption where you pay only for as long as you need the extra stuff.

KfYv0N0.jpg
 
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That's how it works anyways RIGHT NOW. There's a myriad of Intel processors, but very few actual production devices. On the consumer side, every model of I7 and I9 starts off as an I9-13900k with integrated GPU. Individual features are then disabled first if there's any yield issues, and then purposely to fill in the volume for the product stack. All your i7 and i9's physically house a Xe GPU, but they may be disabled to fit into a certain SKU.

Right now, that GPU is forever lost to you if you wanted to save money on a cheaper processor. But say you get big into streaming games, Intel QuickSync is the bee's knee's for encoding as it leaves your GPU completely untouched for running your games (and the quality is awesome). Right now in the current model you'd have to go out and buy an entirely new CPU to attain that functionality. With this new plan, you could simply pay Intel $50 or whatever and activate the one that's already in your system with a button click.
Perhaps my wording was bad. I am aware of how it works with defects and all. The problem with number of models Intel speaks about is their own doing so their point is not really valid.
What I meant is you're going to pay for the "all inclusive model" with the chance to add some functionality later on and that might be a big IF. I believe there are segments of the market where it might make sense. Then again why not sell it normally, than doing dumb pay as you go policy.
 

USAFRet

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This is not new.

486DX vs 486SX.
1991-92.
Same chip, just that the SX has the floating point calculator disabled.
Ran perfectly well if you did not need that FPU capability.

Later, buy and install the i487 chip to get that capability.
The 487 simply turned the existing 486SX off, and took over the whole thing.

Or, you could have paid more to start and just gotten the 486DX.

Similarly, Oracle/AWS/WindowsServer licensing.
Same code...more capabilities on different chips/CPUs/number of users/connetions = more cost.

Heck...this is the same with your ISP connection.
Change from 100/100 to 500/500, they do not have to come out and string new hardware.
Just flip a switch back at HQ.
The capability is already there, just matters how much you wish to pay.
 

kanewolf

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It will only be for a short period of time. users will eventually figure out the port that everything works on and disable it. them figure out how to "open" access to all cores. after that intel will shut it down.
Maybe. But, how many businesses, and these CPUs are targeted for large business consumers, would risk the legal exposure?
When we see the pricing model, more educated comments can be made.
 

TJ Hooker

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That's how it works anyways RIGHT NOW. There's a myriad of Intel processors, but very few actual production devices. On the consumer side, every model of I7 an I9 starts off as an I9-13900k with integrated GPU. Individual features are then disabled first if there's any yield issues, and then purposely to fill in the volume for the product stack. All your i7 and i9's physically house a Xe GPU, but they may be disabled to fit into a certain SKU.

Right now, that GPU is forever lost to you if you wanted to save money on a cheaper processor. But say you get big into streaming games, Intel QuickSync is the bee's knee's for encoding as it leaves your GPU completely untouched for running your games (and the quality is awesome). Right now in the current model you'd have to go out and buy an entirely new CPU to attain that functionality. With this new plan, you could simply pay Intel $50 or whatever and activate the one that's already in your system with a button click.
But if you start selling upgradeable consumer CPUs, it starts to matter whether an individual, lower binned part was binned that way because of defects, or just to meet product segmentation demands. So would Intel start throwing away all products that have defects (seems unlikely), or would they start having multiple SKUs with the same operational specs, but some would have the option to upgrade (possible multiple tiers of upgrade potential), and some wouldn't? And would the upgradeable SKU(s) cost more, simply to have the option to upgrade in the future (for an additional cost of course)?

Edit: And I think the more general concern people have possibility that Intel starts paywalling features without significantly discounting the base CPU, such that the minimum cost to get X feature set (through some combination of CPU cost + upgrade cost) ends up being more than it is today.
 
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