It would be interesting to know if the number of CPU types we have right now is because of hardware issues (binning) or just plain market segmentation. Because

It would be interesting to know if the number of CPU types we have right now is because of hardware issues (binning) or just plain market segmentation. Because many of the features could be enabled in software/firmware, I think they could just do a "custom" CPU where you just license whatever features you use. Do you want ECC and AVX-512 on your i7? Do you need a GPU on your Xeon? Just pay $50 (or whatever) for the key to enable these features.