Intel Kills Kaby Lake G, Vows To Offer Drivers For Five Years (pcworld.com) 16
When Kaby Lake G debuted at CES 2018, it made a big bang. No one expected sworn rivals Intel and AMD to collaborate on a CPU package, marrying a 7th-gen Kaby Lake CPU with a unique AMD Radeon RX Vega GPU. But what began with a bang ended Monday with an unceremonious memo. From a report: The Product Change Notification published by Intel on Monday confirmed that pretty much every single Kaby Lake G, including the Core i7-8706G, the Core i7-8705G, and the Core i5-8305G, would be discontinued. Last call for orders will be on January 17, 2020, and the final shipments are scheduled for July 31, 2020. While the end of life of a processor isn't typically a big deal to consumers who own them, one sticking point could have been driver support. Specifically, Kaby Lake G drivers for the custom AMD Radeon RX Vega M graphics come only from Intel. With a normal discrete GPU, the consumer would download drivers from the original company, such as Nvidia or AMD. With Kaby Lake G kaput, where does that leave Kaby Lake G-owners? Intel said the company will follow its standard policy and provide driver support for Kaby Lake G for five years from the launch of the product. All told, that probably means another 3.5 years of driver updates.
Because... Intel (Score:5, Insightful)
Did Intel have an infusion of Product Management staff from Google in the past five years? They seem to love killing things off and leaving customers high and dry.
...cough... Edison ...cough...
Consumer Rights Act (Score:5, Interesting)
In the UK the Consumer Rights Act 2015 states that a product must last a "reasonable length of time". For most electronics like computers and TVs that's six years. So if Intel abandon their CPU after 5 years and it becomes unfit for purpose due to lack of drivers, you are entitled to compensation. From the vendor, not Intel.
Actually, no... (Score:3)
What will happen, as has happened with some other vendors (HP and Sony spring to mind) is that Intel will stop providing drivers, period.
Even though the incremental cost of keeping the downloads available is minuscule, so that people can clean-install an OS as needed (drive failure, for example) and keep older kit working, this doesn't promote sales of new hardware. And don't get me started on the habit of some makers to "white-list" WiFi cards...
Companies like Toshiba and Dell keep their driver archive ali
Re:Consumer Rights Act (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll see you one better. I think when a company decides to stop supporting something, everything related to that product should become public domain.
Re: Consumer Rights Act (Score:2)
And what would that accomplish? (Score:3)
Are you going to invest billions in a plant to manufacture a dead product that few people want?
The patents and whatnot for the chip are still being actively used in new chips. So the idea that it should become "public domain" is a farce.
Software and hardware is continuously improved upon through new editions.
Supporting old editions indefinitely it like demanding book printers fix the errors in books already printed.
Pretending you should get some "free" support is like demanding printers give you free copie
Re: (Score:3)
I think they're talking about the source code to the drivers becoming PD. Which seems reasonable.
Lies (Score:5, Interesting)
While the end of life of a processor isn't typically a big deal to consumers who own them,
Bullshit. It was a huge deal for me. I had the misfortune of purchasing a laptop with an Arrandale family CPU. Intel abandoned the CPU months later, a year before Microsoft released its new Windows 10 system. I couldn't upgrade my laptop to Windows 10, despite having a perfectly functional and recent CPU, because Intel wouldn't update the IGP video driver so my laptop would qualify for the free upgrade to Windows 10.
Re:Lies (Score:4, Informative)
While the end of life of a processor isn't typically a big deal to consumers who own them,
Bullshit. It was a huge deal for me. I had the misfortune of purchasing a laptop with an Arrandale family CPU. Intel abandoned the CPU months later, a year before Microsoft released its new Windows 10 system. I couldn't upgrade my laptop to Windows 10, despite having a perfectly functional and recent CPU, because Intel wouldn't update the IGP video driver so my laptop would qualify for the free upgrade to Windows 10.
Wait a minute. You wanted to upgrade to Windows 10?! You must be new here.
Re: (Score:2)
Or he had Windows 8.
Re: (Score:3)
If the laptop came with Windows 8, wanting off that to anything else would be understandable.
Re: (Score:3)
What? Windows 10 works fine on Arrandale including iGPU support, and works fine from a Windows 7 license key.
Disclosure (Score:1)
I would love to see the agreement Intel made with AMD before killing off their product line shortly after. "Thank you for the detailed information gotta go!"
Misread title (Score:2)