Are there any enterprise-useful features provided by ME that couldn't be provided external to the CPU?
Since the boot process already involves some amount of hand holding from outside the CPU, any of those features could have been provided by a designed-for-enterprise motherboard with ME-like features in the BIOS/UEFI or even some sort of peripheral in the PCH (or wherever).
Since the boot process already involves some amount of hand holding from outside the CPU, any of those features could have been provided by a designed-for-enterprise motherboard with ME-like features in the BIOS/UEFI or even some sort of peripheral in the PCH (or wherever).