Thoughts on software-defined silicon

Indeed, Intel has already tried this once: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Upgrade_Service

However, I think it's much more likely to work these days, especially in the enterprise space. Processors there are already highly segmented, with dozens of SKUs that only differ in what fuses are blown in them in the factory. In that sense, this can be a real benefit for enterprise customers, as they would presumably need to order and stock fewer CPU variants.

Of course the catch is that longer term, while there is an upper limit to the amount of segmented SKUs are feasible to produce, there is no such limit for feature toggles.