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
Imagine a fancy bakery. Their main customers expect nothing but the best cakes possible, and they make them.
Every so often, they’ll mess up the frosting, and the entire cake isn’t worth the price. So instead of throwing the cake away, they’ll repackage it and sell it cheaper instead.
Non ELI5:
A CPU is just a lot of silicone transistors. And i mean a LOT. Billions even. Imagine a sausage made of silicone, about as wide as your palm, which then gets sliced into thin discs called wafers. There’s multiple chips on one wafer.
Silicone isn’t perfect, and often, there’ll be a crack or imperfection right on top of a chip. So instead of throwing the whole wafer away, they’ll use what they have, and sell it cheaper. Silicone is ridiculously expensive, so they have to use every little bit they can.
EDIT: It’s silicon, not silicone, I’m baffled by how I messed it up
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