The HECI bus allows the host operating system (OS) to communicate directly with the Management Engine (ME) integrated in the chipset.
High BOM costs are usually incurred due to the need for additional components and routing.
Builtin HECI functionality and third-party management cards can allow the Host OS to directly initiate management events (such as remote wake, or, out-of-band throttling to decrease thermal and power profile) in case HECI is supported by the running OS.
Traditionally, the OS controls Wake-on-LAN and must call third-party device drivers to enable support on a network card.
This is a major problem in large-scale enterprise deployments with standard software images.