Intel Corp (INTC)

[Wouter Tinus]

Yes you are confused, or you wouldn't have mentioned the "FPGA portion of the chip" in your previous post. Also you seem to be confused about what firmware is. Hint: it's software, loaded at boot time.

So in summary:

- Yes, the feature can be enabled in all Xeons, by all customers, with or without Intels help. It's just a matter of knowing where to look in this 500+ page manual, which contains the configuration settings for all features: https://www-ssl.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/datasheets/xeon-e7-v2-datasheet-vol-2.pdf

(Of course knowing where to look, what applies to your situation and how to implement it is valuable knowledge that Intel obviously provided, but that's consultancy, not customization.)

- No, it doesn't have to be "reversed", because it's not in hardware. The feature being enabled or not depends on whether the BIOS asks for it to be enabled every time it gets powered on. If you take an IBM system, pop out the chips, and switch them with the ones from an Oracle system, *both* will reboot as if nothing ever happened.