The term for this is "binning", and the explanation is wholly innocent. Manufacturing silicon chips is not an exact process, and there will be some rate of def

The term for this is "binning", and the explanation is wholly innocent. Manufacturing silicon chips is not an exact process, and there will be some rate of defects. After manufacture, they test the individual components of their chips. These chips are designed in such a way that once they identify parts of a chip that are defective, they can disconnect that part of the chip and the others still work. (I believe they physically cut stuff with lasers but my knowledge is out of date). This process can also includes "burning in" information on the chip itself, like setting bits in on-die ROMs, so that if your OS asks your CPU for its model number it can respond appropriately. Interesting side note: The same thing happens when manufacturing even basic electronic components like resistors. All the resistors that are within 1% of the target resistance get sold as "±1%" resistors, which means it's pretty likely that if you buy the cheaper "±5%" resistors and test them, you'll find two clusters around -5% and +5% and very few at the target value.