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Lying about the chip (ie saying that it's a $500 intel chip when it's actually an overclocked $200 chip), is clearly unethical. That said the realities of chip

Lying about the chip (ie saying that it's a $500 intel chip when it's actually an overclocked $200 chip), is clearly unethical. That said the realities of chip binning make this weird, as you could also argue that it's unethical and wasteful to artificially lock down some hardware's potential. It's not only chips that suffer from this, like when BMW tried to apply a monthly subscriptions for using the heated seats that came with your car.

dagmx 2y ago
saying that chip binning is unethical assumes the binning is truly for purely artificial reasons. What if the binning is genuinely because hardware is failing the required QC? Wouldn’t it be ethical to sell a unit that isn’t at risk of breaking/corrupting data etc and reusing the same units that have already been made? Binning is a pragmatic approach to reducing waste while providing products at different price points.
deaddodo 2y ago
Or you can think of it in the opposite manner, they could just sell all of the $500 spec'd chips as $500 chips and miss out on an entire market of people that could use a lower spec'd chip at $200. But that's besides the point. If I'm buying a $500 chip, I want that chip. The one that passed, qualified and is guaranteed at that speed by the manufacturer. I don't want a $200 chip that you hacked to happen to be able to run at that speed. If you want to buy that $200 chip and hack it to run at $500 speeds go for it, there's nothing wrong with that.
20after4 2y ago
BMW does a lot of this kind of shenanigans, not just with their heated seats. They also charge extra to unlock the horsepower of their engines. There are several performance levels which have the exact same engine with only a few different parameters tweaked in the firmware in order to limit the horsepower output to the level each customer paid for. Tractor manufacturers do the exact same thing with horsepower output. And it's not just John Deer (famously anti-customer and anti-right-to-repair) but most (or maybe all) of the major brands are doing similar shit.
- nikau 2y ago
  One could argue the warranty claims are likely lower on the detuned engines
  - dehrmann 2y ago
    A great way to extend battery life is lie about the capacity in the UI and only charge to 80%.

dagmx 2y ago

saying that chip binning is unethical assumes the binning is truly for purely artificial reasons. What if the binning is genuinely because hardware is failing the required QC? Wouldn’t it be ethical to sell a unit that isn’t at risk of breaking/corrupting data etc and reusing the same units that have already been made? Binning is a pragmatic approach to reducing waste while providing products at different price points.

deaddodo 2y ago

Or you can think of it in the opposite manner, they could just sell all of the $500 spec'd chips as $500 chips and miss out on an entire market of people that could use a lower spec'd chip at $200. But that's besides the point. If I'm buying a $500 chip, I want that chip. The one that passed, qualified and is guaranteed at that speed by the manufacturer. I don't want a $200 chip that you hacked to happen to be able to run at that speed. If you want to buy that $200 chip and hack it to run at $500 speeds go for it, there's nothing wrong with that.

20after4 2y ago

BMW does a lot of this kind of shenanigans, not just with their heated seats. They also charge extra to unlock the horsepower of their engines. There are several performance levels which have the exact same engine with only a few different parameters tweaked in the firmware in order to limit the horsepower output to the level each customer paid for. Tractor manufacturers do the exact same thing with horsepower output. And it's not just John Deer (famously anti-customer and anti-right-to-repair) but most (or maybe all) of the major brands are doing similar shit.

nikau 2y ago
One could argue the warranty claims are likely lower on the detuned engines
- dehrmann 2y ago
  A great way to extend battery life is lie about the capacity in the UI and only charge to 80%.