Intel quietly kills controversial Software Defined Silicon initiative — GitHub repository was archived in November 2025, allegedly signaling the end of active development

Intel began to make Software Defined Silicon initiative (SDSi) preparations for its 4^th Generation Xeon processors four years ago, with an aim to sell its processors and then earn a premium for letting customers activate accelerators for specific workloads. Eventually, the initiative got its official 'Intel On Demand' name… and vanished from the radar. Now, the iconic PC chipmaker is quietly discontinuing the program, reports Phoronix.

Intel largely stopped discussing its 'Intel On Demand' initiative publicly in recent years and the lack of new patches indicates that its development activity slowed, possibly meaning that Intel no longer considered it a priority. Phoronix now reports that the Intel SDSi GitHub repository — which contained the software components required to support Intel On Demand — was archived in November, signaling the end of active development. At the same time, Intel removed most On Demand documents from its website and for now everything that reminds of the program is old PDF documentation accessible through its website, according to Phoronix.

Taken together, the disappearance of software support, documentation, and public talks strongly indicates that Intel has abandoned the Software Defined Silicon initiative altogether and it will not be a part of Intel's next-generation Xeon platforms.

Intel positioned its On Demand initiative as a flexible way for customers to activate such accelerators as Software Guard Extensions, Dynamic Load Balancer (DLB), Intel Data Streaming Accelerator (DSA), Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator (IAA), Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator, and Intel QuickAssist Technology (QAT) in its Xeon processors without purchasing higher-tier models upfront. The model supported both permanent feature enablement through a one-time payment and a usage-based license that enabled Intel customers to pay only when additional acceleration capabilities were used.

Despite seeming technical flexibility, the initiative faced significant criticism from the industry. The main concern of the server crowd was the fact that accelerator IP blocks physically existed inside the processors but remained disabled unless customers paid to activate them, which sounds like Intel wanted its customers to pay for select features twice. Given such concerns, it is unclear whether On Demand ever took off. Given that the SDSi support has now been archived at GitHub, it certainly does not seem so.

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