That's a bit different, right? CPUs are binned based on their ability to perform at higher frequencies / not be defective. They're turned into different 'products' so that less-than-ideal parts can still be sold instead of thrown out. 4-core CPUs may be 6-core CPUs where 1 or 2 cores are physically defective pieces of silicon. Sometimes, especially as a process matures, there's too few defective parts, so they take some of the higher performing parts out of the good bin and throw them in with the lower performance ones to meet demand.
This seems more wasteful because you have to mine extra lithium, manufacture extra batteries, install them, haul them around -- and this makes your car perform worse. All on the off chance someone later decides to buy up to the extra-power version?
One's a great way to use extra parts that would have been scrapped. The other's just wasteful...
Intel and AMD have sold hardware as lower SKUs than binned in order to meet demand too. Intel’s also sold upgrades [1] that unlocked features that were already in the CPU.
I guess the closer analogy to CPU binning would be if they found a fault in a P100’s batteries and sold it as a P85 instead of replacing the battery. CPUs aren’t a great analogy though, since the unused material in a Xeon-E that failed binning and became an i3 is pretty minimal.
Sort of... sometimes CPU manufacturing processes are too efficient or mature and they produce more higher spec parts. They don't then lower the price of higher spec parts, instead they under clock the CPUs and lock them so they can't be clocked to their higher spec.
People caught wind of this fact and began overclocking their CPUs beyond their rate specifications. This started an arms race between CPU manufacturers and buyers. Intel at one point was, and possibly still is, laser cutting the CPU PCBs to physically prevent changing the clock multipliers after they're set.
This seems more wasteful because you have to mine extra lithium, manufacture extra batteries, install them, haul them around -- and this makes your car perform worse. All on the off chance someone later decides to buy up to the extra-power version?
One's a great way to use extra parts that would have been scrapped. The other's just wasteful...