Happens all the time in electronics. They usually built the top end and then burn off or snip the wires to produce the lower end.
A few years ago there was the known Quadro/Geforce videocard issue:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398555
basically adding or removing a few resistors made card performa like other models costing hundreds of dollars more.
Re:Jailbreaking Used Teslas
by tedunangst on Saturday October 31, 2020 @01:11PM
(#24953183)
You just described basically every consumer motherboard with raid. It's there in the chipset, but requires a key to unlock.
Every consumer motherboard that I've bought in the last decade or more has supported RAID, and none of them have required any additional purchase to "unlock" it.
Re:Jailbreaking Used Teslas
by tedunangst on Saturday October 31, 2020 @01:39PM
(#24953483)
Correcting myself: I was thinking specifically of intel vroc, which is actually more an enterprise thing.
But I wouldn't accept my motherboard supplier locking hardware features behind software updates either. Like if my can do pci express 16x. I wouldn't think it is right that it only does 8x unless I pay for a software unlock