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by dwighttk 3348 days ago
"cost them basically nothing"

"using it as a differentiator between server and desktop"

so it would cost them SOMETHING...

1 comments

Something related to artificial milking, as opposed to tangible production costs.
Sure, but as a consumer it is kind of nice that my chips are probably a little less expensive because server companies are paying more for their chips.
Who said we aren't milked as consumers too?

Those are two segmented markets. If Intel's revenue is above their R&D and other expenses, then whatever profit they make milking enterprises/server companies is independent of what they make milking us.

Why is this any different from tesla selling you software locked batteries?
Well, it could be, who said it isn't? Though i'm not familiar with the Tesla case.

But selling "locked batteries" in a product where the batteries are 80% of the innovation/feature set, and where after-market batteries could cause all kinds of issues, is one thing.

Whereas selling memory at triple or more the price just because you switched on some feature (ECC) that would have costed nothing to switch on for everybody is another thing.

In Tesla, they literally sell everyone the 75 KW battery. Some people pay 80k for the car, some people pay 75k for the car, but the battery is software limited to 60KW. You can later pay 6k to software unlock the extra part of the battery sitting in your car.

Product market segmentation is a very reasonable thing to do. Why do people make it out like a bad thing? If you ever run a business, you will want to find a way to get big enterprise to pay X, and small business to pay X/4. ECC is something businesses care way more about than gamers, so why not charge more for it?