You’re going to be very disappointed to discover that this is common practice for many technology products. It’s cheaper and less risky to design a small number of things and then segment their capabilities than it is to make custom things for every different market segment.

It’s also useful for binning: These lower spec locked products can have defects in the unused parts, like flakey memory regions or channels. Not every CMP170 can be fully usable after unlocks.

The alternative to this market segmentation isn’t “Everyone gets the whole thing for the lowest price”. It’s that the lower price version doesn’t exist at all, or if it does it’s a lot more expensive.