alt Hacker NewsYour framing is what's backwards. NVIDIA artificially nerfed FP64 for a long time before they started making multiple specialized variants of their architectures. It's not a conspiracy theory; it's historical fact that they shipped the same die with drastically different levels of FP64 capability. In a very real way, consumers were paying for transistors they couldn't use, subsidizing the pro parts.
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> consumers were paying for transistors they couldn’t use
This is Econ 101 these days. It’s cheaper to design and manufacture 1 product than 2. Many many products have features that are enabled for higher paying customers, from software to kitchen appliances to cars, and much much more.
The combined product design is also subsidizing some of the costs for everyone, so be careful what you wish for. If you could use all the transistors you have, you’d be paying more either way, either because design and production costs go up, or because you’re paying for the higher end model and being the one subsidizing the existence of the high end transistors other people don’t use.
> subsidizing the pro parts.
You got this wrong way around. It's the high margin (pro) products subsidizing low margin (consumer) products.