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I recall that it's common to make one kind of processor, and deliberately cripple them to varying degrees to ensure you can sell to every price point without ha
by EliRivers 12y ago
I recall that it's common to make one kind of processor, and deliberately cripple them to varying degrees to ensure you can sell to every price point without having to go through the extra expense of making a range of processors.
The analogy with car engines, I presume, is to make one kind of car engine, and to use the electronic control system to present a range of performances to the consumer market, without having to go to the expense of actually making different engines. Does this already happen, or is it yet to come?
- Zak 12y agoIt's not common yet. Usually, the higher-performance version has hardware differences involving either more expensive materials, a more expensive manufacturing process or greater mechanical complexity. I did notice a possible example though: the Volkswagen Crafter, a full-size van popular in Europe has 5-cylinder turbocharged diesel engines in several different power ratings. I'm fairly confident they're mechanically identical and just have different maximum boost settings for the turbocharger, though they may have different sizes of turbocharger.
- aunty_helen 12y agoAs Zak mentioned it does happen to some degree in the Euro market. There's little difference (sometimes only ECU configuration) between some of the high end and performance Volvos. It is a difficult thing to do though because high performance parts often come at the cost of price, fuel economy, reliability and usability. Using the performance variant turbocharger across a line of cars and setting the ECU to a lower boost would result in the lower spec ones having overly expensive parts that boost at the wrong rev range resulting in worse fuel economy and engine response.