Radio kill switch in Intel CPU
Intel's Sandy Bridge processors have a remote kill switch
http://www.techspot.com/news/41643-intels-sandy-bridge-processors-have-a-remote-kill-switch.html
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits.
Opening narration The Control Voice 1960s
http://www.techspot.com/news/41643-intels-sandy-bridge-processors-have-a-remote-kill-switch.html
There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits.
Opening narration The Control Voice 1960s
Comments
Come to think of it, it would make a great tool to terrorize businesses and extort money from them as well.
But it also proves that even very bright people can be total idiots.
We are almost in 2011 people, think back 10 years and tell me what INTEL has done over that amount of time.
For how much money, resources, and tech they have, we should have optical cores by now. (or at least optical interconnects)
They are milking you all for every ounce of flesh you still have left.
And putting kill switches in the slaves computers.
First Intel did this with the unique ID. They tried that one a while ago.
You are all truly living in a matrix.
P.S. a very little company in CA, can make an 8-core 80mhz chip for 8bux.
A massive company Intel can only make a slightly faster heater.
That's all sounds very conspiratorial.
Don't forget that if Intel were to be sitting on their butts "milking" us and not pushing forward them AMD would soon taking the upper hand.
Outside of the PC world ARM processors are catching up with CPUs running at a gighertz now. So Intel has a lot of competition and will have more in the future.
If the optical interconnects and such that you dream of were so easy, or even desirable in a cost sensitive market then I'm sure someone would have been working on it.
Having said that I do agree, a kill switch in a CPU, what an insane idea.
There may be some benefits but there are security risks involved with it. This is an imperfect world and some people don't always have our best interests in mind.
I've had tech support take control of my screen by remote control over the internet and watched them snoop.
There was also a news article about a technician (won't name the well known company) and he allegedly copied a customer's naked pictures and posted them online.
Reading the actual feature details at Intel's site explains what it actually is (part of their vPro and AMT stuff), and that it's something that has to be specifically built into the machine (motherboard, chipset, bios) and that you have to setup a service (or subscribe to an existing third party one) to even make it work.
It's likely to only be in laptops and corporate workstations and servers.
You guys should do a little more research on things, instead of trusting some random blogs and the comments on them.
Or there could be a software fix via malware:
(Quote)The new way: Covert remote access
Intel's preferred solution today is to have a PC equipped with an Intel Core 2-based processor, Q45 chipset and an 82567LM network chip. This combination of components allows covert remote access via something Intel calls vPro. And, it's built right in.(Endquote)
http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-opinion/39455-big-brother-potentially-exists-right-now-in-our-pcs-compliments-of-intels-vpr
(Quote)In truth, these abilites may or may not exist today in vPro. I doubt we'll ever know for sure because if they did Intel wouldn't want to publish that information. And to be sure, I'm not saying these abilities do exist. Let's be clear about that. But, the possibility of them existing is definitely there and that's the point of this opinion piece. As a point of fact, it wouldn't even be difficult to implement these abilities being discussed. It would be a mild extension to the incredible footprint of existing technology already in the CPU, chipset and ethernet controller.(Endquote)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro
I give up, you people will believe anything you want.
Optical interconnects are nothing new, heck they make them in optoisolators, and they have become quite advanced, cheap, miniaturized and lazer like in intensity.
But the only thing we get from intel is more cutesy space men in colored outfits dancing around, while they pack our chips with unique ID's and kill switches.
No 5ghz cores, no 10ghz cores. no 512bit cpus. etc... no cpu optical interconnects either intra-cpu or cpu to motherboard (or even to ram)
Don't give me this moores law this, price that.... We have been stalled in cpu speeds for years, and no one is asking why, everyone is quick to blame it on thermal, or process issues..
Bull.. Intel has been talking about nano- thermal channels intra-chip for many years now...
Its all garbage to keep us buying sub 4ghz processors, old tech, and limited abilites, with tracking IDs and kill options?
Give me that 512bit, 50 core, 10ghz cpu already.. And don't tell me its not possible, I'll design the damn thing for you, but you will need to give me the same access to money that intel has.
You must be new to the internet.
> Optical interconnects are nothing new, heck they make them in optoisolators, and they have become quite advanced, cheap, miniaturized and lazer like in intensity.
** There is quite a bit of difference between having a led IR source activate a single transistor or triac and using IR/light for interconnecting millions of individual transistors.
> But the only thing we get from intel is more cutesy space men in colored outfits dancing around, while they pack our chips with unique ID's and kill switches.
** I agree their marketing may need some work, and unique ID's and kill switches have limited appeal (no appeal at all for me), but there may be situations where they are useful. As long as having them enabled is optional I have no problems with it.
> No 5ghz cores, no 10ghz cores. no 512bit cpus. etc... no cpu optical interconnects either intra-cpu or cpu to motherboard (or even to ram)
**Going beyond 32 bit CPU's involves trading off code density for mips/flops. Look at the speed/code density difference between a spin and PASM program on the propeller for an example of this.
** CPU to motherboard optical interconnects face even greater difficulties than on chip interconnects do. Circuit traces connecting pins to a packaged chips are a well understood technology. How do you connect hundreds of optical signals to a motherboard and then to other chips?
Don't give me this moores law this, price that.... We have been stalled in cpu speeds for years, and no one is asking why, everyone is quick to blame it on thermal, or process issues..
** CPU clock speeds ARE stalled due to power dissipation limits inherent to the semiconductor technology. Granted, the heat can be removed by several methods and those chips can then be clocked at higher speeds, but doing so is expensive, and price is an important consideration for most of us.
> Bull.. Intel has been talking about nano- thermal channels intra-chip for many years now...
Its all garbage to keep us buying sub 4ghz processors, old tech, and limited abilites, with tracking IDs and kill options?
** Intra-chip thermal channels may distribute the heat evenly over the chip, but that heat still has to be removed from the chip somehow.
> Give me that 512bit, 50 core, 10ghz cpu already.. And don't tell me its not possible, I'll design the damn thing for you, but you will need to give me the same access to money that intel has.
** Extending the number of bits may help solve problems in some ways, but it creates others as well. How many problems need 512 bit floating point/integer math or other instructions? How do you access 8 or 16 bit values in that 512 bit block of data? As for the 50 core CPU, read up on the problems, tradeoffs, and limitations Parallax has encountered with the design of the Prop II. Same thing applies to Intel. I have serious doubts that you could do what you claim even with access to the money and resources that Intel has. Like a lot of things in life it looks a lot easier than it is. Particularly when you are looking at an individual or organization that is very good at what they do.
Yea, I'm a big dummy. What WAS i thinking? You know me best, Mom.
(as i climb back into my box of limitations and restrictions)
Even going to 64bit over 32bit really only improves math heavy software. Office gets no added improvement.
Optical channels are not inherently better unless the computer itself is optical. Copper handles 10 ghz just fine and Intel has even done tests at 256ghz inter core
What I do know is there are a lot of technical and economic difficulties involved in any approach to increasing CPU power.
I am not sure if a 512 bit wide instruction computer has been built but VLIW computers have already been built and sold. Judging by the lack of information about them I would guess they were not a great success.
There are also GPU chips available with multiple CPU's. Not sure how many are on the largest chip but I beleive one chip has at least 128 cpu's in a pipeline.
The tradeoff for the VLIW systems is the high cost and limited range of problems it is suited to solve. For the GPU's the cost is reasonable but it is optimized for graphics processing and the limited range of problems that can make use of that architecture.
The Intel and AMD chips have the advantage of being well established, available in large numbers, reasonably priced, powerful enogh for solving a wide range of problems, and can be combined to produce large paralel processing systems. They also have a huge base of software available.