Intel Offers I3 upgrades

Bokeh

Intel offers software upgrades for its core i3 chips- The Inquirer

Devilsbane

Is this just a firmware upgrade then? Initially it sounds like they were going to be doing physical swaps but then later sounds just like an update.

Bokeh

I think that it is just a firmware upgrade, but you have to "purchase a code" from your laptop vendor. Who knows what they will cost.

SteveLord

I remember reading about this like a year or so ago. I figured they would have abandoned such an idea.

Bad enough it is rumored their next line of chips will not include heatsink/fans and cost considerably more than the current Sandy Bridge line.

TheShadow

Hmm seems that they are drawing a page from the maimframe and mini computer makers of 20 years ago. Control store changes would up the computing power by changing pre-fetch, register counts, cache usage, and pipeline length.

tiersten

Devilsbane wrote: »

Is this just a firmware upgrade then? Initially it sounds like they were going to be doing physical swaps but then later sounds just like an update.

Buy upgrade code.
Run tool on PC that prints out a serial number for your CPU.
Go to Intel website and type in both codes then receive another code.
Type in code into upgrade tool. It'll flash it into the BIOS I assume and not the actual CPU itself.

tiersten

TheShadow wrote: »

Hmm seems that they are drawing a page from the maimframe and mini computer makers of 20 years ago. Control store changes would up the computing power by changing pre-fetch, register counts, cache usage, and pipeline length.

CPU/GPU manufacturers already do this to a certain extent. It just isn't software controlled normally. They design and fabricate towards the highest clockspeed and just burn configuration links with a laser to lock it to some other configuration.

Certain GPU models have been upgraded in the past purely by altering the BIOS which reenabled disabled portions of the chip like shaders.

SteveLord

Its called binning. And those BIOS mods are an expensive risk.

TheShadow

SteveLord wrote: »

Its called binning. And those BIOS mods are an expensive risk.

Right it has always been that way. Step one is parametric testing. If there is a step two then that is the laser lock or nano code lock so that the same micro code can be run. Intel uses BIOS to over ride nano code essentially inserting conditional jumps to correction code. Step two/three is the bin sort collectively called binning. Finding unauthorized BIOS mods is risky because you are forcing a chip to move into the parametric sort tolerances typically +/- 10%. At a certain point in the manufacturing process life cycle yields increase and more chips work at higher specs which over clockers discovered long ago, so artificial limits are inserted like Intel's I3 apparently.,