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I'm reminded of the $50 upgrade to fully unlock your Pentium G6951 CPU: https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50-to-unlock-stuff-your-cpu-ca

I'm reminded of the $50 upgrade to fully unlock your Pentium G6951 CPU: https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50-to-unlock-stuff-your-cpu-can-already-d/ https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50... This is the sort of thing economies of scale bring. It's evidenced by CPU and GPU binning, whereby it's cheaper for the manufacturer to make one part and segment the market with simple switches to disable functionality (in some cases, disabling parts of the chip with flaws which render it otherwise unsellable). Car makers have been doing this for ages with simpler features, such as including air conditioning or intermittent wipers but requiring the user to pay exorbitant amounts for the switch on the dash to activate them.

tajen 10y ago
...and slower CPUs were the same pieces which didn't pass the quality test for heat dispersion, thus sold at lower price, for lower operating frequencies.
- doughj3 10y ago
  Like the AMD Sempron 140/145 which was sold a single core CPU but could have its second core "unlocked" in the BIOS: http://www.overclock.net/t/1461066/how-to-unlock-the-2nd-core-in-sempron-145-am3 http://www.overclock.net/t/1461066/how-to-unlock-the-2nd-cor...
makomk 10y ago
This is the sort of thing that economies of scale bring when paired with a lack of effective competition. If there's effective competition, then some company can and will cut into all the other companies' sales by selling a fully-unlocked version of their hardware at close to the price of the locked version.
- hueving 10y ago
  >sales by selling a fully-unlocked version of their hardware at close to the price of the locked version. not quite. it's possible you can't afford to make the fully-unlocked version at scale unless you can charge extra for it.
- rcthompson 10y ago
  Economies of scale by themselves cause lack of effective competition, because the biggest company automatically wins by taking advantage of the economies of scale and the rest go out of business. That's why an industry with significant economies of scale is called a "natural monopoly".

tajen 10y ago

...and slower CPUs were the same pieces which didn't pass the quality test for heat dispersion, thus sold at lower price, for lower operating frequencies.

doughj3 10y ago
Like the AMD Sempron 140/145 which was sold a single core CPU but could have its second core "unlocked" in the BIOS: http://www.overclock.net/t/1461066/how-to-unlock-the-2nd-core-in-sempron-145-am3 http://www.overclock.net/t/1461066/how-to-unlock-the-2nd-cor...

makomk 10y ago

This is the sort of thing that economies of scale bring when paired with a lack of effective competition. If there's effective competition, then some company can and will cut into all the other companies' sales by selling a fully-unlocked version of their hardware at close to the price of the locked version.

hueving 10y ago
>sales by selling a fully-unlocked version of their hardware at close to the price of the locked version. not quite. it's possible you can't afford to make the fully-unlocked version at scale unless you can charge extra for it.
rcthompson 10y ago
Economies of scale by themselves cause lack of effective competition, because the biggest company automatically wins by taking advantage of the economies of scale and the rest go out of business. That's why an industry with significant economies of scale is called a "natural monopoly".