If you want them to be fully functional, you will have to pay extra

The processor sector has not changed its business model much for years. The Manufacturers They offered different alternatives, and depending on the features they offered as standard, some of them cost more and others less. It wasn’t “customizable,” but Intel wants it now Change that idea With the future of Intel Xeon.

Intel OnDemand. The service called Software-Defined Silicon (SDSi) – also known as “Intel On Demand” – is a new initiative from this manufacturer that will debut with future 4th generation Intel Xeons. Sapphire Rapids Family system will include This will allow you to buy those processors and then get more or less benefits depending on one thing: what you pay.

Capped processors (unless paid). The argument is clear: the customer will buy a processor that has everything necessary to work at 100% of its capabilities, but Intel will cap the processor and make some of its options active only if the customer pays extra. The company has not yet given A lot of information About this proposal, but the first models are expected to appear early next year.

Single payment or subscription. New Intel processors will offer great original features. It’s certainly a significant change compared to their previous models – a tile/slate concept that should improve scalability and the number of cores used -, but they’ll also have those additional options that can be activated a couple of ways.

One, push this “one-time activation” to Intel. The second, with a consumption model that, through a type of subscription, would allow these options to be activated (and deactivated) on demand as companies need more capacity and benefits.

Extras to go. Options include the Intel Software Guard Extensions – a security option – the Intel Dynamic Load Balancer – a useful balancing feature for communications applications – or the Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator – which accelerates data compression and decompression in large applications. data-. As you can see, they are very vertical business niche oriented jobs.

Try before you buy. Intel seems to want to implement a model where customers can test new features before deploying them to production applications. The idea, to make the processors most suitable for business needs, is a decidedly unique strategy which at the moment, yes, will come down to the Xeons: it does not seem possible to reach the Intel Core family in the short term. (or in the medium term.