Having a base model ASIC as a physical piece of hardware makes me think of the early days of microcomputer desktop stuff where having a socketed ROM or PROM was a key piece of hardware, and people actually knew/cared what ROM was on their system's motherboard.

Imagine if like instead of having a specific Mac Plus ROM, you had a thing that looks like a fat ASIC that can hold models sitting on a slotted daughtercard directly next to the CPU and RAM.