It isn't different, but it's also not a clear comparison. Some differences are based on binning and calibration for example. Take sensors, silicon, power system

It isn't different, but it's also not a clear comparison. Some differences are based on binning and calibration for example. Take sensors, silicon, power systems etc. which are all imperfect. Some product variation exists on purpose, while others are mostly just as a side-effect from the production yields. Some segmentation is a bit extreme (Windows Pro etc. can use gpedit but Windows non-Pro can't...), while others are a matter of paying for a service rather than a thing. (i.e. Terraform FOSS locally vs. Terraform Enterprise in the cloud - you actually get a different product with different capabilities, not the same product with different things 'cut off') Perhaps Intel is a good example in the hardware realm; some chipset and ECC variations are choices that are purely made so that server usage is highly discouraged. I would guess that some of that is simply a side-effect of R&D cost: you can't really have consumers foot the bill for extreme R&D, but you also can't make better chips without a very costly R&D process. So they might have selected a segment they know they can squeeze and put the specific features only in products for that segment. (One could argue that another perspective might be 'server' CPUs subsidising 'consumer' CPUs) It's not always as simple as 'fake barriers for no reason', but because sometimes it really is, it gets hard to distinguish with is really annoying.