[0zymandiass]

It's not necessarily just Dell, they're just the first to use the feature.

It also won't necessarily work in other Dell motherboards, just ones using the same key as the first.

It's strange Dell would blow the fuses by default, though.

[Patrick-STH]

HPE and some other vendors do this, not just Dell.

[felixfurtak]

Could even enable some sort of region lock too? Selling CPUs at different prices to different markets for example?

[kllrnohj]

Not really. AMD is only selling unlocked CPUs, and the "locking" is done the first time it boots in a given motherboard. So crossing regions wouldn't be any more of an issue in the future than it is now, you "just" need to ensure your motherboard and CPU come bundled together. Or you need to ensure you get an "unlocked" CPU, which is what retailers provide via AMD.

This will greatly complicate the future second-hand market, though. Buying used Epyc CPUs off of ebay in 5 years will become very sketchy for example.

[soneil]

Theoretically. If the OEM shipped region-specific firmware with a region-specific signing key, the CPUs would be region-specific as a side effect.