Intel officially discontinued its "Software Defined Silicon" (SDSi) initiative, also known as "Intel On Demand." The program allowed customers to pay a fee to activate additional features on certain Xeon server processors post-purchase. Intel archived the project’s official GitHub repository, signaling the end of the pay-to-unlock feature strategy.
The decision follows the initiative's failure to gain mass market traction. Hyperscalers and other large-scale customers resisted paying extra fees to enable capabilities on silicon they already purchased. SDSi was intended to offer features like Data Streaming Accelerator and Dynamic Load Balancer on demand. Intel only sporadically maintained the program before its deprecation.