The Amazing Unlockable CPU

I just found this article on Engadget about a CPU unlocking program started by Intel about 9 months ago. This program has drawn considerable fire in the comments section of reporting websites such as Atomic PC, Tom's Hardware, and of course the Engaget page, but the commenters are...misdirected. Many comments read something like this "It's like getting a corvette and finding out after you paid for it that it can only do 60mph until you pay to unlock it up to 120mph!" That example is flawed because that's illegal and because sports cars are actually kind of like that. What Intel is doing is telling consumers that they are getting a processor that has 2 threads of execution that run at 2.8GHz and 3MB of L3 cache for $X. Intel also says that for an additional $50 you can unlock 2 more threads and 1MB of cache on this CPU after purchase giving you 4 threads running at 2.8GHz and 4MB of L3 cache. That is not illegal or unethical.

Manufacturing a CPU, or anything else with nano meter sized transistors, is challenging and expensive. The smallest piece of debris on the silicon can damage the chip being manufactured. To increase the number of chips a manufacturer can sell, they determine which parts of the chip work and which parts don't. They will have some flawless chips and some with defects that can be worked around to make a flawless chip. Lets say you have a 4 core CPU but there is a manufacturing defect in one of the cores. You could throw it out as defective, or you could disable that core and market it as a 2 or 3 core chip. The customer never knows the difference, but that isn't important because they got exactly what they paid for.

Unlocking a CPU is not a new idea. Certain models of AMD CPUs have been unlockable with the right kind of motherboard for a long time, although it hasn't a guaranteed upgrade. Intel is taking CPUs that have features that are known to be working and disabling them making a CPU that will be sold for less but is guaranteed to be upgradable. I think that most people who participate in this program will not be satisfied with their upgrade. Most of the programs people use only need 1 core to run smoothly once they have loaded. More cores is better for multitasking, but how many people REALLY multitask? Having word, email, and a web browser with 10 tabs open is hardly multitasking because you can only use one of those programs at once. Thus you really only need 1 core and throwing more cores at these programs won't result in a noticeable speed increase. A real upgrade for people would be to turn the processing speed up. Upgrading from 2.8GHz to 3.6GHz would be a very noticeable improvement. That's called overclocking and it is still more or less free.

Will this be a useful product in the future? Probably not, but I bet that we'll see more of it. I'm sure that many people would prefer to do a cheap and easy upgrade rather than buy a new computer or install a new processor to try to get a faster computer.

Disclaimer: I am an Intel employee, but I do not speak for or represent Intel in any way in my comments. This information is all public knowledge, just intelligently assembled.