Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do (2010)

Re:Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can al... by timthorn on Tuesday June 04, 2013 @12:11PM (#5820309)

The 386SX and 386DX were exactly the same silicon, but the cheaper model had a fuse deliberately blown to disable the maths coprocessor. It all comes down to whether you take the view that you're buying a piece of silicon, or a slice of R&D.

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Re:Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can al... by sageikosa on Tuesday June 04, 2013 @12:28PM (#5820415)

The 386SX was a 16-bit data bus, the 386 was retroactively labelled 386DX to differentiate it.

The 486SX and 486DX were the math co-processor variants of the 486, and they weren't originally "deliberately" blown; they just didn't pass QC and were disabled. Later variants just removed the sections for the FPU from the die.

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Re:Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can al... by Guvante on Tuesday June 04, 2013 @12:17PM (#5820350)

Note that sometimes this is done for partial failures, for instances if the tests for the maths coprocessor failed, they could just disable that bit and sell it at a lower price point.

Historically that happened a lot more than today however.

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Re:Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can al... by mjg59 on Tuesday June 04, 2013 @12:24PM (#5820388)

No, that was the 486SX/DX. No 386s had built-in FPUs - the 386SX was a DX with a 16-bit data bus and a 24-bit address bus.

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Re:Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can al... by timthorn on Tuesday June 04, 2013 @12:48PM (#5820560)

Bitrot in my brain... :)

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Re:Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can al... by sageikosa on Tuesday June 04, 2013 @08:31PM (#5822996)

I was certain, but I still looked it up ;-). There's nothing like making a mistake on Hacker News to show one how to eat humble pie.

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