Intel bumps up core counts for 13th-gen vPro chips

Intel wants enterprises to think upgrading to notebooks and PCs powered by its 13th-gen Core vPro processors isn't a "luxury" they can pass up without putting their businesses at risk. The lineup of business-oriented CPUs, announced on Thursday, launches as PC demand continues to slow precipitously, and enterprises rethink …

[chuckufarley]

It's one thing to say "Buy my stuff because it's good"...

...And quite another to say "Buy my stuff at an over inflated markup because I need the money."

Intel still owes me for all the bridges they burned down between 2008 and 2017. I have perfectly good hardware that I can't use because I can't update the BIOS to get rid of Spectre/Meltdown/Zombieload vulns. So I paid money for shit that turned out to be literal shit. From now on this Emptor will always Caveat away from Intel.

[Sandtitz]

Re: It's one thing to say "Buy my stuff because it's good"...

"I have perfectly good hardware that I can't use because I can't update the BIOS to get rid of Spectre/Meltdown/Zombieload vulns."

Can't update BIOS? I'd blame the motherboard or system vendor then.

I'm typing this on a 9-year-old laptop that received its final BIOS update three years ago and is patched against all those vulns.

Also, I'm not really the expert here - but won't the Microcode updates provided by most OS vendors be sufficient anyway?

[Paul Crawford]

Would these Intel "must have" security features, accessible from anywhere in the world, be the same ones that the NSA disable on their own machines?

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3220476/researchers-say-now-you-too-can-disable-intel-me-backdoor-thanks-to-the-nsa.html

[Omnipresent]

Honestly, he might be right.

He could absolutely be right about that. We cannot avoid the changing world that's happening, even if we don't need it, or want it. We all know it's coming anyway. The problem with intel is two fold IMO.

First: microsoft is standing in their way. They have made themselves dependent on microsoft.

Second: The pay to play sectioning off of various pieces of the chip. The pay more for features that are already on the chip. People are going to give you a big finger. Bad move. You would actually be better off selling separate chips (even if it is more expense up front).

fortunately for intel, people may not have a choice at this point. We are slaves to the machine now, and the machine needs more power.

[Anonymous Coward]

My home build PC with an 8 year old processor still does everything I want it to with no issues. It has had some upgrades, new video card and SSD. The SSD was the game changer in performance. If I put a newer CPU in I doubt I would even notice the difference.

[Wexford]

Similar here - my 4th gen 4-core i5 still doing just fine for most things, to my ongoing surprise as a tech worker who used to upgrade every other year. Switching to SSD and upgrading to 16Gb RAM has extended its life significantly.

Running VMs exposes its limitations - I can manage one Win10 VM (work from home environment) but the performance hit is noticeable on both guest and host. For that reason I'm considering an upgrade to a Ryzen 9 with lots of cores.

[Groo The Wanderer]

Any cores that VMWare Workstation doesn't see don't exist as far as I'm concerned.

That leaves Intel with a pathetic core count on the "new generation" desktop.

[ayay]

I am doing my part

I am now responsible for ordering servers, laptops and desktops. I grew up seeing Intel general douchebaggery.

All our servers are Intel, all our desktops are Intel, our laptops too. Until now. This year, everything will be AMD. Suppliers who don’t want to deal with AMD are being replaced.

The fact that they are hurting makes it even better in a twisted way. AMD was what I could afford back in the day, and not only Intel pulled all sorts of shady maneuvers to kill them, they forced us all to a decade of mediocrity in the aftermath of it.

That’s nothing. As far as I am concerned, they need to suffer even more. And until AMD stops being the innovative powerhouse they became after rising from their grave, I will enjoy the schadenfreude in all its glory.