People planning to purchase new processors in the future may have to incur additional hardware related expenses. As discovered by Phoronix, Intel has a patch that will enable additional processor capabilities to be activated if a license is obtained by its holder.
The Company may artificially limit the performance of its processors by means of software. And all this in the hope that sooner or later customers will accept the need to pay for the service of having access to the full power of the equipment they have purchased.
Nothing is certain
This does not necessarily mean that in the future, customers will not be able to rely on truly efficient processors without additional purchases. By reading the description of the Software Defined Silicon (SDSi) mechanism, you can discover so far that it is designed to activate additional functions.
Sam Voronex He emphasizes, however, that the technology description does not mention any specific features that it will unlock. You can only guess that Intel plans to use it in Sapphire Rapids processors, but full certainty will be gained only in the future, when the company decides to comment on this discovery.
