anon2 (anon.delete@this.anon.com) on January 30, 2023 6:41 pm wrote:
> Groo (charlie.delete@this.semiaccurate.com) on January 30, 2023 6:17 am wrote:
> > dmcq (dmcq.delete@this.fano.co.uk) on January 29, 2023 3:32 pm wrote:
> >
> > > From the other point of view - who would like to pay less for their chip if they'd
> > > already paid for an external GPU and didn't need the one on the chip?
> > >
> > That is a logical fallacy, Intel isn't charging less, they are charging more for the features
> > to not be artificially turned off. If you don't believe me, go look at how much the hyperscalers
> > pay for such trivialities. Similarly, go look at AMD pricing. What you are basically saying
> > is that Intel was giving a discount to ALL of their consumer CPUs because they didn't want
> > the AES-NI instruction set that the enterprise variants used. Yeah right.
> >
> > The line is simple and distinct, if it has a noticeable yield effect, things like cores,
> > clocks, and TDP/leakage, then it is fair game to bin on and charge for. If it is arbitrary
> > and can in NO SANE WAY affect yields, it is extortion.
>
>
> For some creative definition of the word extortion which does not mean extortion, sure. If you need
> to support your position around misleading and inflammatory rhetoric, then it is pretty flimsy.
>
> A lot of hardware and software is sold with with this kind of differentiation. Increasingly out
> in the real world, non-computer space too. A manufacturer is perfectly free to segregate and differentiate
> and price their products entirely as they see fit, and if it is cheaper to manufacture and ship
> the same physical thing with differentiation done with firmware or software settings or blowing
> some fuses than to run two different manufacturing lines, good on them. Better than everybody
> having to pay slightly more and still winding up with differentiated products.

To put it differently in case it wasn't clear, a lot of what is being sold is the fruit of intellectual labor, not just the end artifact. This is clear in the case of software where the marginal cost to create and distribute the product to the customer approaches zero, people still sell that. Certainly for the case of differentiated features in the software -- it's entirely immaterial whether unlocking advanced features come from a key that is entered to unlock code and data you already downloaded, or whether it comes from a key that initiates the download of that code and data.

At this point some zealot is claim it's evil for anybody to charge money for software, but we can safely ignore those people.

Extortion would be Intel selling you an ECC processor but you find out it halts when encountering an ECC error and demands you pay them more money before it will provide you with your corrected data.