I think it's a HORRIBLE policy of Intel - or any company for that matter - to install new services onto our computers and then tell us "sorry, it's a secret" when we ask what they're for. Really inspires trust, huh?
I suggest Intel *revise* that policy ASAP.
From my own research and testing, I can say the following: Both the Content Protection HECI Service and the Intel Integrated Clock Controller Service can be disabled without apparent consequence to normal system operation.
The Content Protection service is likely an implementation of HDCP as already suggested. I'd be willing to bet that disabling it would cause a default state in which no protected content can be played because the system cannot verify that you're not attempting to play onto a device that can make copies. That's also what I take from Intel's statement "for the proper functionality of the graphics driver, I would not recommend you remove [it]." Of course, it is possible that it would go the other way and allow all content, but I doubt it.
What I'm really curious about is the Intel Integrated Clock Controller service! God it frustrates me that they won't disclose what this does! I can say that this one was added to my system only when I installed the Intel Xtreme Tuning Platform - but disabling it has no known effect on the capabilities of the XTU platform. I can still modify CPU clock multipliers, voltages, current limits, ram settings, etc. with the service disabled. The fact that this service is usually installed with the integrated display driver leads me to believe it may manipulate that clock setting specifically but so far I've been unable to verify whether the XTU application depends on it for this because XTU is unable to modify the iGPU multiplier setting on my system with or without the ICCS service enabled. I can, however, successfully modify this setting in the BIOS. This XTU failure to apply the iGPU clock setting could be due to my iGPU driver being a modified version provided by AMD (for Enduro graphics switchability with the AMD 7970m discrete graphics card) or maybe it just can't change the setting on laptops. It does say it's intended for desktop boards, but all other settings are functional (including BCLK which BIOS fails to modify - very exciting!)
I've run my system through its paces with and without the ICCS service enabled and have detected no differences in performance or clock settings being used (with HWINFO64) but my general feeling is that its unlikely this service makes the hardware run faster - software that monitors hardware rarely does anything good for your speed. Most commonly things like this impose some form of limitations, and that fits with Intel not wanting to tell us what it does. If anyone discovers any more information on this, please share!
Until I have at least some idea of what this service is supposed to do, I'm leaving it disabled!!
