[Nokinside]

This seems like the most likely case.

If the GPU part has a failure, you can disable it and rescue the CPU. If the CPU has a failure you might rescue GPU. Pairing failed GPU-CPU's together for cheaper products and selling fully functional ones for the top of the line products makes sense.

The same happens with multi core ships and even with failed caches. Just disable them and sell them as low end chips.

[monocasa]

Or they knew that they were going to have yield issues, and these dies don't even have a GPU in the first place rather than binning them after the fact.

[Nokinside]

The solution they pick is typical linear programming problem using die size, yield and price of different options after disabling failed areas.

[monocasa]

They also layout with some understanding of the yield (yield is almost entirely a function of die area at a given node). So if they decide to just entirely bin off the GPU, and they know this ahead of time enough, it makes more sense to not have a GPU in the first place. The GPU is about half the die area, so you would get better yield by just not having it at all (but all of this depends on having enough lead time to decide this before layout).

[auvi]

any links to such an LP problem? I am curious to see how they formulate the problem. thanks in advance.

[unixhero]

Or NAND flash memory/drives, they chop it up!