Intel to offer 'unlock codes' to increase processor performance

[Flipped Gazelle]

New Intel TOS: You aren't buying the CPU, you are licensing it.

Just another step toward (exclusively) cloud computing.

 

[Idontcare]

As far as I know, nobody has figured out how to dump all the fuses from modern x86 processors (so a secret stored in them is safe), and as far as I know, nobody has managed to unlock a modern locked x86 processor.

How is it possible then that people unlock cores on their AMD chips?

That's not a challenge to your post, I'm just curious why it is possible to do this.

I do agree with your statement that unlocking the multipliers on a modern chip doesn't happen anymore.

Does AMD lock multipliers the same way that they lock cores? How is it the mobo guys can get away with core-unlocking and not multiplier-unlocking?

I don't see why this has to be easily-breakable. A keygen would need to know the user-invisible secret, which the processor never has to make externally available (at least without JTAG).

I suppose this would really become a philosophical discussion at some point, but my own view on this is that if you (a company) crafts a system of security by way of employing people to build said system then the inner-workings of that security system are only secure so long as the company keeps retains employees and keeps them well paid and happy.

It doesn't take too many employees becoming ex-employees before the knowledge and capability needed to defeat a security protocol somehow becomes public knowledge.

There's good reason, great reason in fact, that you don't see the CIA and NSA doing massive rounds of layoffs or firings...and no one in the trusted circles of the CIA or NSA complains about their pay-grade It takes a lot of money, or personal conviction to the contrary, to get one to turn spy against their employer.

Just look at all the info Charlie had right about Fermi delays and issues...Nvidia has a few unhappy employees and Charlie leveraged that against them. It doesn't take much, Intel is not unique, they have their share of disgruntled employees as well.

edit: moral of my long-windiness is that its not that the process need be "easily-breakable" but rather that making it be NOT easily breakable is in itself not an easy thing to accomplish.

 

[Kenmitch]

I look at it this way:

I'd think that in the end it may be best for those whom shop for a computer by price and then later on decide they should be been more aware of features. I'd think that this is kinda like a buyers remorse situation type of thing more than anything else.

Not sure if it'll be implemented up the intel food chain or if it'll just stay on the lower end of it. Currently it looks like it's in the price point that would be most profitable to intel....The low end.

I wouldn't see a problem with paying for 4 cores and 8 threads now and having the option to unlock 6 cores and 12 threads at a later time....Price dependant tho

 

[ultimatebob]

Any bets on how long it's going to take for this to be cracked? I'm thinking 2 weeks after they're shipped to customers.

 

[Kenmitch]

Any bets on how long it's going to take for this to be cracked? I'm thinking 2 weeks after they're shipped to customers.

I can just see the hackers lining up at best buy waiting to purchase a pre built, sub standard box full of mostly cheap parts now....Not

I'd think that it would be more beneficial to ignore this in the early stages of it's developement. To save the effort for when the reward is greater than just a little more cache and hyperthreading....Why help intel perfect the technology when so little would be at stake. Seems to me it would be best to dabble in the cracking of this once maybe 2 more cores/threads are on the line.

Take the idevices for example. As time goes on they are becoming harder and harder to hack into. Don't blame Apple for this as they are not the ones who are pointing out the holes in the devices or the OS it's the hackers that are doing all the hard work for them. They just gotta fix them one at a time and in the end the hackers are kinda working for Apple without being on the payroll

 

[lopri]

This thread made my Sunday morning coffee delicious. I don't think many words need to be spilled on this one because I question whether even those who seem to like the idea would ever buy one for themselves or their loved ones. I think that says more than anything. You wouldn't buy it yourself but you still defend the product - it's a curious proposition, of course. I would like to see who buys one first. (Hey, it's your money and you're entitled!)

 

[ultimatebob]

I can just see the hackers lining up at best buy waiting to purchase a pre built, sub standard box full of mostly cheap parts now....Not

Yep... the hackers will buy them just to prove that it can be hacked. Cheap hardware comes in handy when you want to build yourself a development server, ya know.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What's next in the pipeline, Intel value SSDs that lack trim support, which you can of course purchase for an additional $50?

Nvidia should make SLI support a value-add, buy two cards, pay an additional $50 to unlock SLI mode. (That might almost be a deal if they offered SLI support to P45/X38/X48 chipset owners.)

 

[IntelUser2000]

How is it possible then that people unlock cores on their AMD chips?

That's not a challenge to your post, I'm just curious why it is possible to do this.

I do agree with your statement that unlocking the multipliers on a modern chip doesn't happen anymore.

Does AMD lock multipliers the same way that they lock cores? How is it the mobo guys can get away with core-unlocking and not multiplier-unlocking?

Well, the Intel chips are much harder to do, but this is totally different. For the AMD CPUs I heard even caches could be unlocked taking a Duron to a Athlon. Sometimes the ease of it makes me think AMD does this on purpose or they do not believe it'll take off.

One's something they want to hardware lock it while the other is giving the option to upgrade later. Say for caches, if its physically fused off, it would discourage vast amount of people because the best you can do is make a motherboard with a socket that will enable that or even use wires to short what's needed. If that's even possible.

But if its software upgrade, what's to prevent them from circumventing the lock?

What's next in the pipeline, Intel value SSDs that lack trim support, which you can of course purchase for an additional $50?

This is actually fine. Look at it this way.

Regular non-upgradeable Pentium G6950: $70
Upgradeable Pentium G6950: $70
Equivalence of a upgraded Pentium G6950: $100

What would be not ok is if it costs $100 in the first place.

But of course for the reasons I have mentioned before they don't expand this beyond limited SKUs.

 

[MangoX]

https://retailupgrades.intel.com/Page.aspx?Name=WhereToBuy

 The following systems support CPU upgrades:

    * System XYZ

CPU upgradeable systems can be purchased at participating stores from these retailers:

    * Retailer 1
    * Retailer 2
    * Retailer 3

I just had to LOL. Seems like they are still working on the web page...

 

[CTho9305]

How is it possible then that people unlock cores on their AMD chips?

That's not a challenge to your post, I'm just curious why it is possible to do this.

I do agree with your statement that unlocking the multipliers on a modern chip doesn't happen anymore.

Does AMD lock multipliers the same way that they lock cores? How is it the mobo guys can get away with core-unlocking and not multiplier-unlocking?

I don't know how the core-disabling/re-enabling is done...but apparently it was not very secure. I can't imagine multipliers are unbroken solely due to a lack of interest in breaking them... haven't they been locked for longer than cores?

I suppose this would really become a philosophical discussion at some point, but my own view on this is that if you (a company) crafts a system of security by way of employing people to build said system then the inner-workings of that security system are only secure so long as the company keeps retains employees and keeps them well paid and happy.

It doesn't take too many employees becoming ex-employees before the knowledge and capability needed to defeat a security protocol somehow becomes public knowledge.

There's good reason, great reason in fact, that you don't see the CIA and NSA doing massive rounds of layoffs or firings...and no one in the trusted circles of the CIA or NSA complains about their pay-grade It takes a lot of money, or personal conviction to the contrary, to get one to turn spy against their employer.

Just look at all the info Charlie had right about Fermi delays and issues...Nvidia has a few unhappy employees and Charlie leveraged that against them. It doesn't take much, Intel is not unique, they have their share of disgruntled employees as well.

edit: moral of my long-windiness is that its not that the process need be "easily-breakable" but rather that making it be NOT easily breakable is in itself not an easy thing to accomplish.

You're forgetting that there are different types of security, and good methods don't depend on keeping algorithms secret. For example, we all know how RSA works (pretty simple), and how AES works (stunningly simple), yet none of us can break either of them. As long as getting an unlock code depends on accessing a properly-secured database (so the set of people who could stick the whole thing on a USB stick and walk out the door is small) to look up a code, knowing the full implementation doesn't buy you anything. Heck, even if you do get the database, you can only unlock chips sold so far (assuming per-chip secrets aren't chosen in a predictable order).

I can think of real-world implementations of security intended to be good-enough, and implementations intended to be properly-secured...and the engineers who designed them understand exactly what they're doing. For some of the good-enough ones, an unethical guy walking out the door can break the system. The properly-secured ones seem secure to me.

Well, the Intel chips are much harder to do, but this is totally different. For the AMD CPUs I heard even caches could be unlocked taking a Duron to a Athlon. Sometimes the ease of it makes me think AMD does this on purpose or they do not believe it'll take off.

Didn't those chips have the locking implemented by laser-cutting metal bridges on the outside of the processor? I doubt that was really intended to be secure.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Ctho, are you talking about AMD chips I mentioned?

This will nevertheless create a lot of controversy.

Don't do it Intel.

 

[CTho9305]

Ctho, are you talking about AMD chips I mentioned?

The laser-cut stuff to unlock the multiplier / caches? Yes.

 

[StinkyPinky]

McCaffe

- Restricts users from doing what they want on their own pc
- Embeds itself and self heals.
- Impossible to uninstall without it destroying the pc
- Bugs you about purchasing upgrades
- Hogs system resoruces
- Phones home
- Targets anti-virus software

Trojan

- Restricts users from doing what they want on their own pc
- Embeds itself and self heals.
- Impossible to uninstall without it destroying the pc
- Bugs you about purchasing upgrades
- Hogs system resoruces
- Phones home
- Targets anti-virus software

Hmmmmmmmmmmm

 

[Cogman]

Ctho, are you talking about AMD chips I mentioned?

This will nevertheless create a lot of controversy.

Don't do it Intel.

I'm really not seeing the controversy. So they are artificially limiting the chips, big deal. I would be more concerned if they were giving us yearly activation fees to use their processors.

 

[taltamir]

I can just see the hackers lining up at best buy waiting to purchase a pre built, sub standard box full of mostly cheap parts now....Not

are they restricting those to OEMs? that would be a stroke of genious. It is not worth it to buy an entire crappy machine just to get one of those to crack...

 

[Tsavo]

Well, yes, they are a for-profit business. Most i7 parts are binned for demand, not because most of them can't meet a higher end specification. It's just how it is and has been for awhile.

Yeah. This is a pretty damned smart move on Intel's part. I see it as Intel giving the consumer an option that wasn't available to them before without stepping up to a higher priced pc. I wouldn't be surprised to see this spread out to all of their low-mid range CPUs on all platforms.

 

[frostedflakes]

I think people are making too big a deal over this. It's actually a pretty smart move clearly targeted at the off the shelf crowd. For those saying its bait and switch, etc. you're clearly wrong. Bait and switch is buying something and then not getting what you bought. When you buy your system that has the pentium chip in it you get exactly what the specs says (speed, cache, etc), there's no deception no switch. At the same time you ARE PAYING LESS then for the system with a Core 2 or higher performance processor. At some later point you feel like your system needs a speed boost, so you pay the $50 to get the unlock code that makes your processor faster without having to open up your PC and swap CPU out. Its perfect for the non technical crowd and gives you a fairly cheap way to extend the life of your system.

This is not different then how every Microsoft Windows 7 CD contains every version. Only the key (and hence how much you paid for it) you used when installing determines what version gets installed and at any later date you can upgrade your version of windows with a new code.

This, I don't see what the big fuss is. It's a decent idea IMO, gives your average consumer the ability to upgrade their CPU without having to buy a whole new one and attempt to install it themselves/pay someone else to. Obviously it won't appeal to a lot of enthusiasts and overclockers, however, I think it will benefit us because inevitably the system is going to cracked, which means we may eventually get a way to software unlock extra features on Intel chips, much like core unlocking with Phenom II. :]

 

[Idontcare]

are they restricting those to OEMs? that would be a stroke of genious. It is not worth it to buy an entire crappy machine just to get one of those to crack...

That would make the most sense.

 

[DrMrLordX]

This thread made my Sunday morning coffee delicious. I don't think many words need to be spilled on this one because I question whether even those who seem to like the idea would ever buy one for themselves or their loved ones. I think that says more than anything. You wouldn't buy it yourself but you still defend the product - it's a curious proposition, of course. I would like to see who buys one first. (Hey, it's your money and you're entitled!)

Some people have more money than common sense. I have a feeling that these "locked" CPUs will be low(er)-end products about which very few of us will care, though, from the looks of things, Intel may not have any/many overclockable low-end parts otherwise once LGA1155 hits the scene (take a look at the Sandy Bridge dual cores and their total lack of turbo . . . will these overclock at all?)-. The real tasty treat on the low-end, in my opinion, will be desktop Llano if/when proper support for APUs finds itself into lots of "real world" apps, but that's another discussion for another time.

are they restricting those to OEMs? that would be a stroke of genious. It is not worth it to buy an entire crappy machine just to get one of those to crack...

Even if the chips are designated only for OEM systems, a few will leak out from trays that never find their way into actual systems. It almost always happens. Of course, this fact makes them extremely expensive "at launch" since only a few gougers of questionable reputation will sell chips from OEM trays shortly after they become available (I'm looking at you, upgradebay).

I'm really not seeing the controversy. So they are artificially limiting the chips, big deal. I would be more concerned if they were giving us yearly activation fees to use their processors.

Give them time, I'm sure they'll get around to it.

 

[Borealis7]

news out today: seems it is only for a specific low end Pentium G6951 CPU. it will enable full 4MB of L3 cache and HT.

http://www.techpowerup.com/131311/Intel-Wants-$50-for-Software-Unlock-of-CPU-Features.html

 

[IntelUser2000]

Here's Intel's page on that.

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng/398634.htm

They are saying its for resellers and system builders(not as in you and me, but like Dell and such).

 

[slag]

I'm not sure how they'll be able to expand beyond how they are doing now, like with limited SKUs. No secure system has ever been not cracked.

They already have pretty good margins.

Thats not true. DTV pirates still haven't hacked the latest version of smart cards and those were implemented years ago.

Ditto with Dish Network. Their new cards and encryption levels are still unhacked.

 

[Idontcare]

Thats not true. DTV pirates still haven't hacked the latest version of smart cards and those were implemented years ago.

Ditto with Dish Network. Their new cards and encryption levels are still unhacked.

Unfortunately we will never know if this is true. All we can say is that if they have been hacked/cracked then we are unaware of it having been done.

Kinda like good stock decisions, not every fool tells the world about their hottest stock tip. Some people are happy enough keeping it to themselves and having their exploits go undetected for as long as possible.

Doesn't change the reality for joe schmoes such as myself, whether it is unhacked or hacked but the hack is unavailable to me, in all cases the net is the same at my end. But I wouldn't go on record claiming that it hasn't been hacked, how would I know that?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah. This is a pretty damned smart move on Intel's part. I see it as Intel giving the consumer an option that wasn't available to them before without stepping up to a higher priced pc. I wouldn't be surprised to see this spread out to all of their low-mid range CPUs on all platforms.

I was thinking about this earlier today, and I have to admit, I do like it. I bought a single-core 1.6Ghz (TF-20 AMD) laptop at Walmart last year for BF for $200. (What the heck, it was cheap, and it has AMD integrated graphics, HD3200. Great for Flash 10.1.)

Anyways, I found out that Pandora, a bloated flash application, slows down the CPU (chews 100% of the CPU, and 512MB of RAM). So a dual-core would be perfect.

I would LOVE to pay $50, to change my CPU from a single-core into a dual-core. That would be real value for money.

I'm not sure I feel the same way about Hyperthreading (virtual cores), and just 1MB out of 4MB of L3 cache.

If Intel started shipping dual-cores, that could be turned into REAL quad-cores, just by paying $100, then I think I would go for it. The Hyperthreading thing, not so much.

And of course, if this gets cracked, then so much the better, free hardware upgrades for all!

Edit: As it is, I went out and bought a dual-core AMD 2.1Ghz P320 Athlon II laptop for $400. I could have saved $350 if AMD offered this sort of program.