Is Intel Working on CPU-Features-as-a-Service Xeon processors?

Some of you might remember Intel’s Upgrade Service, aka software locked CPUs that launched back in 2010 with the Pentium G6951 that could have an extra 1 MB of cache and Hyper-Threading unlocked for a mere $50. Well, it seems like Intel is working on something similar, but for Xeon CPUs this time around, although the exact details aren’t clear as yet.

Phoronix spotted a Linux patch on GitHub for something called Intel Software Defined Silicon or SDSi for short. It’s clear that it’s for Xeon CPUs and the GitHub page mentions that SDSi “allows the configuration of additional CPU features through a license activation process.” There’s very little to go by beyond this, but it’s not hard to draw parallels with Intel’s Upgrade Service from last decade, just this time Intel is targeting its business customers rather than consumers.

Phoronix mentions that “[t]he SDSi kernel driver exposes a per-socket interface so their user-space application can provision an authentication key certificate that is written to internal NVRAM, provision their “capability activation payload”, and reading of the SDSi state certificate that shows the CPU configuration state for a given processor.” As to exactly what features Intel are planning on putting behind a paywall, we’re going to have to to wait and see, but based on Intel’s Upgrade Service, we might see things like cache and Hyper-Threading, as well as maybe AVX-512 or other “extra” instruction sets being offered at an extra cost. It might also be a feature for unlocking additional CPU sockets in a server. Time will tell what Intel has planned, but what is clear is that the company wants to be able to charge its customers more than once for its CPUs.