Intel to Enable SGX on Latest Batch of Skylake CPUs

Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) originally arrived on the Haswell architecture and provides an instructions set which allows programs to offset private memory subsets for data purposes. On launch, the first batch of Skylake CPUs had this feature disabled for some unknown reason. Thankfully, the latest batch and all future Skylake samples contains SGX by default according to a Product Change Notification.

The CPUs in question are the Xeon E3-1200 v5, Core i5, and Core i7 variants with a different S-Spec code to determine each chip’s batch revision. The SGX enabled CPUs should become available on October 26th and doesn’t require any mechanical changes or re-certification. While this isn’t going to be a major concern for consumers, it’s interesting to see SGX being disabled on launch. Please note, only the S-Spec code will change and the naming scheme will remain the same.

Skylake prices have soared since the launch date and even surpassed the 5820K at certain retailers. Hopefully, as the supply chain improves, prices will decrease and the architecture could become a good upgrade path for those on older Intel chips.

What CPU are you currently using in your setup?

Thank you The Tech Report for providing us with this information.