This could be good for consumers if implemented reasonably. If Intel can save money having just one product line, selling i7s at Celeron prices with cores just disabled in software, it could be good for everyone. Their method of disabling will probably take some time to crack, so people who buy these at Celeron prices can sell them as i7s, flooding the used market with good-performing CPUs.
We already see this with other hardware... Think Dell iDRACs and HP iLOs, which just need a few tricks to get all those licensed features once they're out-of-support and the vendor isn't keeping track of them as part of the support contract.
I'd also like to think this will lower the bar on upgrades during sales negotiations. HP, Dell and Lenovo are trying to get you to buy 100+ servers from them instead of their competitors, one of them might offer a free software upgrade for the CPUs as part of the deal, since it really doesn't cost anyone anything to do so... We've all seen deep discounts on software sales/licenses because their per-unit cost is nominally $0, now that model may be extended to hardware.
Of course the counter-point that comes to mind is IP-KVMs. If you've seen them being sold used for $20, that's because the hardware is useless without an ongoing subscription from the vendor. I suspect that only persists because IP-KVMs are too small of a market to attract the kind of effort needed to crack the mechanisms.
This won't save them money, it'll just extract more from us. It'll make upgrades easier, but at the expense of witholding things from the start. They'll still bin CPUs so they sell the top performers at top prices.
We already see this with other hardware... Think Dell iDRACs and HP iLOs, which just need a few tricks to get all those licensed features once they're out-of-support and the vendor isn't keeping track of them as part of the support contract.
I'd also like to think this will lower the bar on upgrades during sales negotiations. HP, Dell and Lenovo are trying to get you to buy 100+ servers from them instead of their competitors, one of them might offer a free software upgrade for the CPUs as part of the deal, since it really doesn't cost anyone anything to do so... We've all seen deep discounts on software sales/licenses because their per-unit cost is nominally $0, now that model may be extended to hardware.
Of course the counter-point that comes to mind is IP-KVMs. If you've seen them being sold used for $20, that's because the hardware is useless without an ongoing subscription from the vendor. I suspect that only persists because IP-KVMs are too small of a market to attract the kind of effort needed to crack the mechanisms.
We'll have to wait and see.