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Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

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Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#11
If all of this was planned (and I’m not saying it is), that would have been very clever. It would work like this:

1. You “accidentally forget” to disable the feature in hardware. Given how competitive the market is, motherboard manufacturers can be relied upon to enable it in their “1337 OVERCLOCKZ” mode. No conspiracy is needed.

2. You “tolerate” this practice just long enough to win the critical initial wave of reviews and benchmarks. Interested buyers will look at those charts for years to come.

3. And when you finally do turn the feature off to protect the market for your server chips, you can plausibly claim that you had explicitly forbidden using this configuration from the very beginning. None of this is your fault.

.

Edit/Addendum: Just to clarify my actual opinion, of course an honest mistake is more likely, at least for step 1. Very few “evil schemes” exist in reality because people aren’t all that clever (and all that evil). But the possibility is interesting to speculate on.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#13
post #2

Is this not the definition of bait and switch? How can this not end up in a lawsuit and investigation from regulatory bodies ?

It was never advertised, and Intel very specifically said AVX-512 instructions will not be available. Some motherboard manufacturers made them available anyway, now Intel is fixing that. It's like buying a car with an advertised speed limiter of 155mph, then finding that actually it can go 170mph, and then the manufacturer fixes the speed limiter with a software update. Yes we know the car could go faster, but the sp…

> now Intel is fixing that

That's not a fix. That's a disabling. A fix repairs something.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#15
post #11

If all of this was planned (and I’m not saying it is), that would have been very clever. It would work like this: 1. You “accidentally forget” to disable the feature in hardware. Given how competitive the market is, motherboard manufacturers can be relied upon to enable it in their “1337 OVERCLOCKZ” mode. No conspiracy is needed. 2. You “tolerate” this practice just long enough to win the critical initial wave of rev…

I'd normally say this is paranoid but with Intel I'll have to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was never advertised, and Intel very specifically said AVX-512 instructions will not be available. Some motherboard manufacturers made them available anyway, now Intel is fixing that. It's like buying a car with an advertised speed limiter of 155mph, then finding that actually it can go 170mph, and then the manufacturer fixes the speed limiter with a software update. Yes we know the car could go faster, but the sp…

> now Intel is fixing that That's not a fix. That's a disabling. A fix repairs something.

Bringing a product in line with specification is very much fixing it. Even if the fix happens to be disabling something.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#18
Much ado about nothing, IMHO.

AVX-512 isn't advertised by Intel as a 12th gen desktop CPU feature and doesn't provide any advantages for most desktop users anyway.

Sure, there's niche applications like some particular PS3 emulator, but I don't share the author's opinion w.r.t. to performance and efficiency in desktop use.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#19
post #11

If all of this was planned (and I’m not saying it is), that would have been very clever. It would work like this: 1. You “accidentally forget” to disable the feature in hardware. Given how competitive the market is, motherboard manufacturers can be relied upon to enable it in their “1337 OVERCLOCKZ” mode. No conspiracy is needed. 2. You “tolerate” this practice just long enough to win the critical initial wave of rev…

I'll be honest, this looks to be a simple mistake. Cutting AVX-512 literally (meaning in hardware) requires actual staff doing that cut plus it'll increase turnaround times, plus the efficiency cores don't have it. Unlike "let's bin perfectly functional processors into a lower-cored product", this is economically not logical for Intel, which often is the closest from the truth.

Re: Intel completely disables AVX-512 on Alder Lake after all

#20

Stuff like this is why I plan to never buy Intel ever again. I always disliked Intel's strategy for market segmentation by disabling specific instructions, I much prefer AMD's strategy of segmenting just by speed and number of cores. It is really annoying that with Intel you can't run the same program on the server and on your desktop, it makes development and testing a huge pain.

Nvidia do the same with disabling passthrough on consumer GPUs (gotta upsell Quatro).

However I would say avoiding Intel completely is unnecessary. They're a good FOSS citizen when it boils to things like WLAN and GPU.

Its just that with AMD, you can hardly go wrong on CPU and GPU side. Especially on Linux.

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