Chris G (chrisg.delete@this.chrisg.com) on January 28, 2023 3:24 am wrote:
> None of the Sapphire Rapids SKUs with High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) have In-memory Analytics Accelerators
> or QuickAssist Technology accelerators enabled. None of the SKUs with HBM support Intel On Demand
> so there is no way for customers to pay extra for these accelerators even if they want to. The
> SKUs with HBM have recommended customer prices of $8k (32 cores) to $13k (56 cores). Intel should
> enable all of the on-die accelerators on expensive parts like these. The silicon area of the dedicated
> accelerators is small so their effect on yield is insignificant.
>
> The Intel On Demand scheme is penny wise and pound foolish because it will accelerate adoption of
> AMD and ARM processors. This is the type of dumb idea that gets implemented when marketing people
> are in charge. Intel probably spent a similar amount of engineering implementing their scheme for
> metered usage of on-die accelerators as they spent on implementing the actual accelerators.


Without commenting on desirability and ethics, IBM, for example, has long done things like that with the big POWER boxes and Z. On Z you can even do things like short term memory and CPU upgrades (mostly non-disruptively too), so you can handle things like seasonal workloads spikes or special situations. You can even get a boost while booting/IPLing the system. The situations aren't perfectly parallel, but there's clearly people out there who are willing to buy into that sort of thing.