Intel appears to be winding down On Demand program
Intel appears to be stepping back from its “Software Defined Silicon” effort on Linux, the project behind Intel On Demand feature activation on select server CPUs. The change was spotted by Phoronix, as the public Intel SDSi repository on GitHub was marked archived on November 10, 2025, which makes it read-only.
Intel On Demand , previously referred to as Software Defined Silicon (SDSi) , was positioned as a way to enable extra, licensed hardware features already present in the silicon on certain Intel Xeon processor SKUs. Intel’s own fact sheets describe two activation models, a one-time feature activation and a metering-based consumption approach. Neither sounds like a practical approach for something you already physically own.
Source: Phoronix
Intel On Demand was tied to unlocking or expanding specific accelerators and capabilities depending on the processor, including items such as Intel QuickAssist Technology, Intel Dynamic Load Balancer, Intel Data Streaming Accelerator, Intel In-Memory Analytics Accelerator, Intel Software Guard Extensions, and Intel Virtual RAID on CPU.
Source: Intel
Phoronix reports that Intel’s broader On Demand web presence has also faded, with related pages appearing to be removed while older PDF documents remain accessible. However, Intel has not made any public statements about On Demand sunsetting yet.
Source: Phoronix
