It should be illegal to lock devices like that. Pure corporate greed. It is sad that as soon as AMD restored its glory they gone for a cheap cash grab. It should be easy to tell that device is running unsigned boot loader without blocking it (e.g. a jumper on the motherboard). If attacker is able to switch a jumper, then you have bigger problems than a boot loader. Community should nip this in the bud and out AMD.
Did you even read the article? AMD is shipping everything unlocked, it's the OEMs that can choose to active this feature.
Certainly it's a debate whether such feature should exist in the first place, but presumably OEMs are the driving force behind this, so they see a need.
AMD wins because it destroys the secondary market, driving up the prices they can charge for new CPUs.
The OEMs win because once you've put your CPUs into Dell servers, you can't just buy different servers and move your CPUs over (e.g. to reuse CPUs from servers that broke in other ways or were decomissioned for other reasons), so you have a higher hurdle when switching to a competitor. Payment from AMD could also be involved, because I think AMD has more to win here.
You as a CPU buyer, or a buyer of services that cost more if CPUs cost more (aka everything), lose, as does the environment.
How soon can we expect them to just use soldered BGA chips on desktops and servers?
Works really well for laptops - motherboard fried? Just throw that CPU, GPU, RAM and VRAM away, and buy a new one! You're not rich enough to pay for its repair, are you?
Justified by thinness for consumers and security for corporate. What a terrible practice.
Maybe it was the case few years ago, but now the rework equipment is quite affordable. It is certainly within hobbyist reach now to e.g replace BGA chip. That's why they rather go into "security" excuse as this sort of stuff cannot be easily bypassed.
