What is physically different between a high-end CPU (e.g. Intel i7) and a low-end one (Intel i3)? What makes the low-end one cheaper?
In: Technology
Silicon area is expensive. Chip design is expensive. To make the numbers work, intel makes building blocks of chip parts and can “print” different versions. A 4 core chip takes up half the wafer as a 8 core chip and thus costs much less. There is a fixed cost to process 1 wafer. If you can squeeze more “CPU”s on a wafer they are cheaper to make. This is different than having a 16, 12, 10 or 8 core design of a family where ‘bad” cores are marked unused and sold as lower core count. Those chips still take up the silicon area of a 16 core chip, but instead of wasting them, the sell them with lower cores.
The other cost reduction is “binning” where they test the chip at the full rated speed. if it does not pass they test it at a slower clock speed. And keep dropping the speed until it passed. These lower clocked parts are sold cheaper because they can’t run at their design speed.
There are lots of ways to save money once you made the chip. But silicon area is the main driving factor. Which is why they are always shooting for smaller transistor sizes. Not just because smaller transistors can reduce power use, but smaller process size means they can put more chips on a wafer.
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