Towards software defined silicon

These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests. These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites.

If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance. Intel has updated the code it says allows the implementation of "software-defined silicon" SDSi. Chipzilla dropped some code for SDSi into the Linux Kernel in September , describing it as tech that allows users to activate dormant features in silicon. The code outlined a process for enabling new features by verifying ….

That's how this comes over to me. I can think of several ways this could be abused - and I know virtually nothing about chip design. Malware authors aren't "users". And they probably already thought of at least 9 of those ways you mentioned Intel will sell CPUs that operate in a crippled mode.

For some extra money you can buy a crypto key to uncripple one feature of one specific CPU. I think you mean the World Wide Fund for Nature. I expect one of those "optional hardware features" is a three letter agency "snoop mode". Or a three-letter computer company. AFAIK they sold licenses that doubled the speed of your mainframe. And then there is the cost of enforcement. Maybe impossible with Linux. Cellphones of course use that strategy - e.

Notably, the switch is hardware set by region, not a software switch. After some fatalities in CA fires, there was some talk of requiring radio to be enabled in the US so the radio can be used to get emergency info about what roads are open, etc, in disaster situations where the cellphones towers are down and a raging inferno is headed for town, but of course that plan never went anywhere.

Why bother manufacturing several versions of each chip instead of making a single, high-end one then cripple it with software locks? Doing this has the advantage of forcing the customer into pay constantly to play. As for enforcement on Linux, don't count on that.

Intel will simply withhold technical specifications and APIs from open source developers, like Nvidia does with their graphic cards. There will be no open source software for high-end features. It's not quite that simple This is called 'binning' where the CPUs are manufactured, and then sorted into 'bins' based on their capabilities.

So, Intel isn't going to only sell high-end CPUs that have to be unlocked, because they would have to just throw out a lot of their lower-end CPUs if that were the case, and they'd lose money. More likely, this is for things like enabling VROC via software instead of requiring a hardware dongle. Hardware dongles suck, they take up space on the system board, some OEMs won't add the socket for them and simply won't enable the feature, etc. If Intel can unlock such features via signed licenses, it saves on hardware cost AND becomes much easier for both the OEMs and the customers imagine having to open servers to install VROC dongles, vs.

You know, this sounds suspiciously like what IBM, Amdahl and some of the larger mini-computer manufacturers were doing in the '60s, '70s and '80s with microcoded processor extensions.

Pay a fortune, have an engineer turn up with a super secret floppy disk, and get a whole load of new instructions added to your processor.

The only difference now is that we have the Internet, so they have to protect this code with cryptography, to prevent it leaking. Customers also benefited from the "golden screwdriver". They could buy the machine for less, and then later, if and when they needed the additional capacity, pay extra to enable it. Its not like this was done against their will. Customer purchased the machine at the market cost, and then later, if and when they needed the additional capacity, they paid more money for the same hardware.

Pure revenue to the vendor with no cost-based justification. The consumer doesn't benefit, unless you believe that vendors would forgo profitable sales so they could maintain higher standardized pricing. And you shouldn't believe that because vendors that try such a forgoing-sales strategy will lose to competitors who will trade volume for margin.

That's of course what ultimately happened with commodity PCs. Pull out one specific relay, it ran twice as fast and if IBM caught you doing it, you'd get billed at a higher rate for rental. We had a accounting machine at college for listing cards. I noticed it was missing every 3rd cycle and I noticed the S1 and S2 relays counting the cycles.

It was the S1 or S2 relay which I pulled and the machine ran full speed. The IBM rep said, "Don't do that. I'm pretty certain this is capacity. You can or at least could, not sure now buy, at a discount from the full price, servers with inactive processors and memory, and later buy the licenses to use this extra capacity, and add them without even having an engineer visit.

IBM also provide 'time limited' licenses, which were there so you could license and use the additional resources for a short period, presumably to get you over humps in the workload. This was confusingly called the very similar Capacity on Demand CoD. Interestingly, for the Power 7 supercomputer clusters, IBM over-delivered on purchased capacity, in a system they called "Fail in Place". The idea was that the customer could use the extra capacity, but then when devices failed CPU or Torrent hub chip , the failures would be counted against the 'extra' capacity, and not repaired.

Simple failures like memory or adapters would be replaced, but more complex failures would be left, so long as the capacity did not drop below the purchased capacity. At various points in the life of the system, the remaining capacity would be evaluated, and if it was deemed insufficient for the remaining life of the system, repair actions would be initiated. This worked close to the theory, but it was found that when certain "Fail in Place" components failed, like the Torrent chip or the optical links, because of the complicated mesh network topology, it could affect communication speeds between adjacent octants hardware partitions within single drawers.

This is a problem with step-locked HPC tasks, and any jobs including any node in the same compute drawer in the cluster could be slowed down. This meant that they ended up fixing things that they thought they didn't have to when the systems were designed. If they need it for internal development purposes then they can build their own kernel with it in. Making users pay to unlock features that are already in the chip is just going to push folk towards open-source silicon.

Your days are numbered. But someone has to pay for the development costs of that extra silicon. Should you charge everyone for it from the first release, even if most people don't need it? Or should you allow people to only buy what they need?

A scheme like this means cheaper silicon for the basic users, and people who want better performance simply pay more for it. Software, yes. Cars, not so much. It isn't unusual to be given a code to unlock additional software features as those features are typically already installed and just need to be enabled.

However, I cannot recall the last time I was given a code to unlock 2 additional cylinders or enable LED headlamps. Car model trim prices increase because additional items have been physically added to the car. I have a feeling Intel is looking for a way to get on the yearly licensing income gravy train without having to ship anything. They're late to the party. Tesla has been heated back seats and steering wheel, but you need to activate them with your app.

I was reading just yesterday about car manufacturers seeing a bright future with software subscriptions as a significant income stream. This sort of article is useful because we're looking for a replacement car and this gives us a hint about what manufacturers to avoid. I don't see this as "buying what you need" but rather a seductive profit option that sidelines product development in favour of putting effort secure paywalls of existing product.

The result is stagnation we're seeing this with entertainment media at the moment. An empowered user is much more difficult to monetize. Those billionaires are smarter than you might think. Your processor subscription has expired. Your computer is now emulating a BBC Micro until you pay up, scum. That is going to be interesting, what with online payments and exchange of certificates etc, I suspect that paying up is going to take a few days and that's if the web page and payments processing work in BBC Micro mode complete with dial-up Internet?

Many universities had them for listing ones card decks before submitting a job, among other tasks. It seems that if a small piece of card stock accidentally managed to find its way between a certain set of contacts,.

But I'm sure this sort of thing was not done at my school's computer center other than maybe maybe between and Data General used microcoded processors. These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites.

If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance. Update Intel has updated the code it says allows the implementation of "software-defined silicon" SDSi. Chipzilla dropped some code for SDSi into the Linux Kernel in September , describing it as tech that allows users to activate dormant features in silicon. The code outlined a process for enabling new features by verifying cryptographically signed licences.

It moves the implementation from MFD to the auxiliary bus and creates a generic framework for enumerating the extended capabilities. We were sceptical of that assertion because making the effort to add code to the Linux kernel without planning for it to be used is thoroughly counter-intuitive.

It's also the sort of thing that annoys key Linux maintainers: Greg Kroah-Hartman fumed when researchers conducted an experiment by trying to add insecure code to the kernel and then testily pointed out that 80 developers worked to clean up the resulting mess. Intel knows better than to provoke that sort of ire. And now that it's bothered to refine its SDSi efforts, the non-explanation for its kernel contributions is even flimsier than before.

We've therefore asked Intel to again explain its SDSi ambitions. If we receive a meaningful response, we'll let you know. Some companies will go to great lengths to hide business expansion plans, but it appears AWS may have namechecked a defunct UK business in efforts to conceal a planning application for a new data centre.

It's back to the drawing board for a cannabis dispensary software company after an attempt to register the trademark "Potify" attracted the ire of music streaming platform Spotify.

The number of independent UK contractors assessed with the government's controversial CEST tool has fallen, according to a survey published today. The survey of 3, contractors, conducted by tax advisors IR35 Shield in November , showed 49 per cent got their IR35 assessment using tax authority HMRC's recommended tool in that same month.

In April, the corresponding figure was 56 per cent. The new IR35 regime, introduced in April last year following a year's postponement , forces medium and large businesses in the UK to set the tax status of their contractors and freelancers.

Yet another developer of open source software has tired of companies utilizing the code he helps maintain without giving anything back to support the project. On Tuesday, Christofer Dutz, creator of Apache PLC4X, said he will stop providing community support for the software if corporate users fail to step up and open their wallets.

Cryptocurrency startup EthereumMax and top celebrities including Kim Kardashian and Floyd Mayweather Jr are accused in a proposed class-action lawsuit of colluding in a pump-and-dump scheme that scammed victims. In December , the FTC accused Meta of "illegally maintaining its personal social networking PSN monopoly through a years-long course of anticompetitive conduct. This legal challenge fell flat , however, when judges threw the case out six months later.

Evidence supporting the idea it unlawfully dominated social media was said to be lacking though the regulator was given another chance to file an amended lawsuit.

A federal judge has now agreed to hear the case this time. Bernalillo County, New Mexico, has been unable to comply with the settlement terms of a year-old lawsuit over prison conditions because of a ransomware attack last week that saw prisoners back under manual control. County officials on January 6, , filed a notice [ PDF ] with the New Mexico District Court overseeing the settlement invoking an emergency provision in the settlement terms to temporarily suspend their obligations.

Commissioners told the court that all of Bernalillo County, which covers the US state of New Mexico's largest city Albuquerque, had been affected by a January 5, , ransomware attack, including the Metropolitan Detention Center MDC that houses some of the state's incarcerated.

Nvidia chief financial officer CFO Colette Kress says the company has only just begun to make an impact in the server market, and sees a huge opportunity for GPU acceleration there.

She also believes the firm is succeeding in deterring cryptominers from monopolising the supply of graphics cards, and that Nvidia will be in a good position to meet demand for all its products this year after securing supplies. As the world struggles to free itself from the clutches of a global pandemic, maybe it's possible to look on the bright side — at least if you work for a gang of global tech companies.