Intel Officially Introduces Pay-as-You-Go Chip Licensing | Hacker News Reader

Intel Officially Introduces Pay-as-You-Go Chip Licensing

tomshardware.com

15 pointsandrew-ld16 comments

A lot of tech people really hate pricing that is based on value delivered rather than cost of ingredients, but I like it. It is inefficient to make multiple SKUs just to leave out features.

This model is more economically efficient, and ultimately better for both Intel and buyers. If you can get over the “different price for the same transistors” thing.

But as a buyer, would you rather 1) pay more for features you don’t need, 2) pay more for the cost of Intel making a different SKU just to remove those features, or 3) pay less and just have features you don’t need turned off in software?

100% "pay more for features you don’t need" or "pay more for the cost of Intel making a different SKU just to remove those features". Features they can activate can be deactivated (deliberately or due to bugs), and I'd rather not take on that risk if I can avoid it.

I think they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too. In the old days, doing this would risk someone creating a method to expose and use the additional features. Now everything’s so encrypted and locked down that they can literally nickel and dime people to death.

This used to be the exclusive domain of big metal, not inflicted on the low end of the market. Yet another step towards the fewest rights possible

I'd give it a week before some motivated teenager finds a way to unlock all features

It may be economically efficient, but it's materially inefficient. You're increasing the amount of materials and labour required in order to reduce the utility of manufactured products. This indicates an error in the economic system.

In my experience, it's the exact opposite. The gain of such things in logistics, stock management, production are much better than a slightly higher cost of goods. It enable to sell stuff even in cases when it would be too expensive, and enable cheap followup businnes. I would say that such model is much more acceptable in b2b

> materials

They're all printed from the same wafers.

> labor

It's not like manual laborers are sitting there carving these things by hand. We program computers to do it.

Reprogramming and setting up the hardware for multiple SKUs increases cost, paradoxically

> They're all printed from the same wafers.

Not just that. When you fab a design you'll get sometimes get errors here or there and have to disable things. Or it won't be safe to drive the thing to the highest clock speeds. But none of that is happening here: we're talking about the same design and same output quality.

Really just absolute greed and lack of innovation. I hope ARM and AMD continue to eat away at them for this reason. Same feeling about BMW/Mercedes and the subscription heated seats.

Would you be happier if Intel spent the money to have a second SKU that removed the features in silicon, including imperfect yield, and charged more than they are now to cover that extra cost?

Pricing makes more sense when you pay for value delivered.

Neither is ethical, because the company has the option to reduce customer costs while increasing margins, and they are doing the opposite. This is especially true for monopolies.

But that's actually why, despite my complaints, I'm not worried about Intel's actions here. I don't think Intel is offering good value compared to their competition.

The markets where Intel has wins are niche workloads and consumer (AMD is supply constrained and focusing all efforts on the high margin cloud/enterprise market). Otherwise they are losing, and offering lower value will make them lose faster.

So to summarize, I think it's not only immoral, but a losing strategy.

I think you’re saying that only cost-plus pricing is ethical. That’s . . . a take.

Most of the world operates on value-based pricing. For instance, you could probably afford to work for less money, but you are unethically asking your employer for more money than your pure cost of living. You presumably expect your employer to pay based on the value you provide to the company, not your costs.

It may or may not be a losing strategy, but I think it’s very strange to see value based pricing as immoral. But maybe? I’m open to correction if you ask your employer to lower your wages when your costs go down, e.g. by paying off a car or student loan.

I don't have a problem with value based pricing. But I think I'm just going to end up repeating myself now so I'm going to check out of this discussion now.

How long until we get to a clock speed boost subscription?

I'd argue it's less resource efficient.

Presently, chips are individually tested and "binned" into performance groups. The chips that aren't stable at high clocks, or have a bad chunk of cache are binned and sold as a lower performance model. If not for this process, a significant amount of chips would go into the trash before even being packaged.

If instead every chip must be capable of performing at top specs just in case the user upgrades the license. You can't bin partially defective chips as lower performance models, because there is no lower performance model. The entire line needs to meet the top spec, or a license upgrade could cause physical damage to the system.

The binning model is fine. It lets manufacturers sell the vast majority of their chips, and consumers get a deal by buying the lower performance models. Some users still decide to unlock the chips by various means, with completely unpredictable results.

The proposed license scheme doesn't solve any problems, and it doesn't benefit consumers. It creates more waste and passes the cost of that waste to the consumer.

This was exactly my thought. I guess it’s possible there’s another answer but it feels like marketing bs

>would you rather 1) pay more for features you don’t need

I would rather have early adopters pay for features I wouldn't pay for, then after the price comes down, or even relative obsolescence has occurred, I can adopt the full technology at a price I can afford.

The only consumer-beneficial approach to things like this is when the base model which has none of the optional features is still decently high-performance, and priced truly cheap enough for anyone who would be the least bit interested not to hesitate to buy.

If the general consensus is that the bare-bones model is a wonderful bargain and just fine for the vast majority of potential users, then a much more expensive or even overpriced deluxe version geared for the small minority of very well-heeled consumers is sensible.

When it's designed the other way around, the "bare-bones" model ends up being overpriced to some extent by osmosis, nobody ever gets a "good deal" and it's limiting for everybody.

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