Hacker News Reader

Comment by citizenpaul | Hacker News Reader

Something about this gives me the under the skin creepy feel of piles of "locked" resources sitting on peoples desk going to complete waste.

Like when they used to sell mainframes with excess processor capacity then you would pay to unlock the processor that was already there if you need it. If not it was simply manufactured to sit unused in a mainframe its entire life, then be thrown in the trash.

I didn't specifically see anything that said this in the article but there is a TON to digest in there though mdular hardware always has that built to waste vibe. Even if they claim the opposite.

View on HN

I'd assume the opposite actually.

Chips always have to be binned. But previously a chip would have to be binned down to it's worst component I guess -- if they had a chip with great CPUs but the GPUs were a little wonky, and they didn't have an appropriate processor line for that combo, they'd have to bin the whole thing down to low-tier. Now they can instead match up the good CPUs and the good CPUs.

Plus they'll be able to satisfy some of their lust for SKUs by mixing and matching tiles, rather than making a bazillion slightly bins.

> lust for SKUs

That's so Intel. All 37 variants of the Intel Core i9 CPU: [1]

[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/pro...

Core i9 isn't a useful thing to complain about SKUs for. There's probably been thousands of Pentium products at this point.

What you want to look at is how many SKUs for an architecture, like say Alder Lake for Desktop[1]. Do we really need 5 to 7 SKUs at 16, 12, 6, or 4 cores, but only 2 SKUs at 10 cores, and 4 SKUs at 2 cores?

[1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/codenam...

2 cores seems like a niche product at this point, actually 4 SKUs for that is more than I'd expect.

Only 2 SKUs at 10 cores seems a little weird, I wonder if they are 12 core parts with some cores disabled or something like that.

Edit: Note it is just the i5 [...]K's from Q4 '21 that have 10 cores. It isn't that surprising that the early enthusiast parts are a little weird, right?

There are four Alder Lake dies in production, two for desktop (8+8 and 6+0 P/E-cores) and two for mobile (6+8 and 2+8 cores). So the 10-core desktop parts are probably the most cut-down variant of the full 8+8 die, and all the lower core count desktop parts are likely made from the 6-core die that omits the E-cores entirely.

Whether you look at just the desktop segment (29 SKUs from two dies) or the whole family (94 SKUs from four dies), it's an incredibly overcomplicated product stack.

Oh wow, I didn't realize at all that the "10 cores" in this case were actually 6p 4 e.

> , I wonder if they are 12 core parts with some cores disabled or something like that.

If demand for that SKU is higher than for the 12 core SKU and margin justifies it, then yes. It happens with every vendor, specially when node been out for some time - yields are much better and there aren't this many down-binned chips to handle the demand.

My understanding is that binning is mostly about core count and core operating frequency.

Intel has a hard-on for segmenting their product lines. To the point they "launch" new products like the i9, which is just what an i7 used to be. They also deliberately cripple products, like selling SKUs with VT-x disabled. Not to mention them keeping ECC memory out of the entire desktop market for basically all of history.

> They also deliberately cripple products, like selling SKUs with VT-x disabled

Ha, that has been a long time, no? I remember buying a computer with a Q8300 in 2008 or so and there I had to assure a specific revision.

I'm sure part of that is just marketing segmentation, but significant binning does take place. If VT-x is disabled, that may indicate that there were some defects in the location that those circuits inhabit.

Stuff like virtualization features and Hyperthreading are responsible for such a tiny fraction of extra die area and so deeply entwined with critical functionality that it's extremely unlikely for a given part to need to be binned on the basis of whether that feature works or not. Intel would never amass enough broken-HT but otherwise good chips to provide the impetus for an extra SKU.

I don't know any more than the general public, but I would assume VT-X and VT-D is actually just microcode.

It's not "going to complete waste" any more than if you download the MS Office suite and let the installer sit on your computer without installing it because you don't have a license key. Which... nobody cares.

You're licensing the processor capacity. You're not paying for the actual piece of silicon, you're paying your fair share of the R&D and fab investment that went into it. You want to use more, you pay more. The same as software.

The amount of silicon in the chip is, what, a small fraction of the amount of silicon in a single grain of sand? A whole processor is tens of grams of material total. The cardboard boxes a standalone chip comes in probably weigh more. I wouldn't get worried about "waste" here.

Actual fabrication is costly. Also see current chip shortages (it's not a problem with lack of IP). Wasting silicon really is a problem.

From everything I read online, the majority of costs are fixed -- it's building the fab, not producing each chip.

And obviously current chip shortages have nothing to do with it, nobody's including extra unlockable chips in a shortage for that chip.

If a manufacturer calculates it's more profitable to include unlockable chips, the very fact that it's more profitable means it's a more efficient allocation of resources, therefore not wasting anything. We're not running out of silicon generally speaking, and this isn't a case where there are big environmental externalities not being accounted for.

It can actually result in less waste (1 line, no flying techs around to upgrade, etc) depending on how you account for upgrade shipping, etc.

People seem fine with software unlocks for software but often confuse the price of hardware with the cost to manufacture the same.

>> Like when they used to sell mainframes with excess processor capacity then you would pay to unlock the processor that was already there if you need it.

IBM still does this.

Everyone still does this. The kvetching about artificial segmentation is a consumer phenomenon.

Enterprise actually likes it, because it allows zero-downtime upgrades if needed down the road - you don't have to stop your database for a half hour while the tech upgrades your CPU, you just drop in a new license file that says hey, they paid up, here's a key signature to enable the other cores! and suddenly you have a faster CPU, or more memory, or whatever. This is actually a highly-requested feature on AMD Epyc processors from enterprise customers as well, afaik, so, maybe coming soon.

(and it's really not a good thing even in the consumer space... like the "pay to turn on hyperthreading" processor that people flipped out about, that segmentation never went away, AMD and Intel still artificially disable cores for market segmentation, and sometimes still artificially disable SMT (eg 4700U). But now you aren't allowed to pay to turn them on... so if you change your mind and realize you need SMT, now you have to buy a whole new laptop. It's hugely wasteful and expensive. I bet a lot of people who bought a 6600K or 6700K wish they could have paid another $100 to turn on hyperthreading but nope, their only option was paying $350 on ebay for a used 7700K!)

Genuine Intel incompatible items detected in room. Rectify environment and drink verification can to re-enable subscriptions to:

Cores+™ - experience the performance of multiple cores

GHz+™ - awesome speed for the latest games and office spreadsheets

Memory GiB+™ - make room for multiple applications

Note that monthly subscriptions to this Intel Premium Experiences™ will continue regardless of whether re-verification is successfully carried out.

This is so on point.

Consumers don't like it cause they're jealous that there are parts of the chip they can't use yet.

Enterprise LOVES this cause they don't want to pay for parts of the chip they can't use yet, but also forsee wanting to use it in the future. Comes down to a CapEx vs OpEx optimization and having that ability to fine tune that balance is a No 1 requested feature.

I wouldn't call it jealous or mad. Just kinda something close to sad.

As I go though life I keep getting more aware of as silly as it sounds how many things are designed to strip "joy" from our lives. Even if you only wanted 5/10 of the cores or whatever in this thing and sure you paid less. There will always be that nagging feeling in the back of your head that there is a part of what you paid for being intentionally kept away from you. Effectively stripping your ability to have joy/happiness for your purchase. You don't deserve full use of your product because you didn't hustle/work/strive/stress/struggle hard enough to deserve it. Its just anti-human as all things are becoming now day.

meh ... If there is a 5 story apartment building and you rented one apartment that is only a fraction of one of the floors would you be "sad" that you don't get to use all the unrented/empty units in all 5 stories of it?

Of course if you want to rent 2 units, the landlord would be happy to give you the keys if you pay the rent for the second unit!

I think the people who get sad at using 5/10 cores (and paying less for it) are being unreasonable.

It's buffet syndrome, wanting it all and being too greedy.

Now if the manufacturer made you pay all the cost of 10 cores and only letting you use 5, that's a different issue.

IIRC they have something like that but different in the works, 'Software Defined Silicon' (SDSi) is what it's called.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com