I seem to remember reading about IBM sending engineers to make adjustments to their mainframes if the customer paid extra for some specific functionality to be enabled. Sounds like Intel is cashing in on that quite nicely! I do wonder if IBM can nail Intel for billions if the method is under patent.
IBM has been doing capacity/features on demand so long that the patents must be expired. And yes, they still do it on mainframes.
Not just ibm - I believe ncr for sure and I think likes of Honeywell Unisys etc all did it as a standard practice 5 decades ago :-).
We laugh at mainframe dinosaurs here, but really, it all just cyclically trickles down to PC / x86 / Linux :->. Vms and containers and now - unlockable CPU features. I'm assuming speciality engines are next :-)
It's been an inevitable war on First Sale doctrine since they realized that hey, chuck a cryptographic signature verification on the Firmware and you're set for extorting the customer.