If I were Intel, I'd offer free replacements for at-par performance, and potentially tiny cash payment for upgraded performance. Assuming the marginal cost to produce chips, especially older/slower ones, is very low, the only real cost to them is losing out on potential upgrade sales which would have happened organically, for a while.
However, doing this keeps Qualcomm/ARM and AMD from making massive inroads into the market. As well, it would be a great way for Intel to accelerate adoption of their newer technologies, causing even greater lock-in (you could assume a much higher percentage of users will have a feature)
This all works great for socketed CPUs (still common for servers/cloud). For embedded, where CPU is more likely non-replaceable even if socketed) CPU peak performance probably doesn't matter as much -- maybe do a discount coupon? Or work with equipment vendors to subsidize upgrades.
Laptops and non-technical end users (who couldn't swap their own CPU) probably don't care as much but also don't have the ability to upgrade. A rebate/upgrade program would work, or a substantial cash payment. Doing it as e.g. $50 cash or $250 toward your next Intel-CPU laptop would be interesting.
Intel is rich, the market leader, incumbent across multiple segments, etc., so they really should go overboard on their response.
rofl, you don't simply upgrade chips installed in 1+B servers and laptops and network devices and embedded systems. In fact, statistically-few devices-containing-a-CPU are designed to ever have their CPUs replaced. At the last, you replace the motherboard, which requires coordination with the vendor. Consider cars - good luck coordinating that recall!
Devices containing multiple security levels/distinct users, and where performance matters the most, are generally socketed-CPU servers. For other devices, if they're security critical and can't be addressed through software, you can upgrade them at the board or device level early. This has already happened in embedded devices due to the C2000 timer problem.
Assuming there is a software mitigation which has a performance impact, sophisticated users would be capable of adding more capacity (if it's a horizontal scale type workload), upgrading early (if they had extra capacity for futureproofing), or spending money, potentially subsidized by Intel, to upgrade immediately. If there's no mitigation, upgrade early, or rearchitect application (moving away from shared security domains on single boxes, etc.)
If I were Intel, I'd offer free replacements for at-par performance, and potentially tiny cash payment for upgraded performance. Assuming the marginal cost to produce chips, especially older/slower ones, is very low, the only real cost to them is losing out on potential upgrade sales which would have happened organically, for a while.
However, doing this keeps Qualcomm/ARM and AMD from making massive inroads into the market. As well, it would be a great way for Intel to accelerate adoption of their newer technologies, causing even greater lock-in (you could assume a much higher percentage of users will have a feature)
This all works great for socketed CPUs (still common for servers/cloud). For embedded, where CPU is more likely non-replaceable even if socketed) CPU peak performance probably doesn't matter as much -- maybe do a discount coupon? Or work with equipment vendors to subsidize upgrades.
Laptops and non-technical end users (who couldn't swap their own CPU) probably don't care as much but also don't have the ability to upgrade. A rebate/upgrade program would work, or a substantial cash payment. Doing it as e.g. $50 cash or $250 toward your next Intel-CPU laptop would be interesting.
Intel is rich, the market leader, incumbent across multiple segments, etc., so they really should go overboard on their response.