The final paragraph
For now, Intel’s On Demand program is reserved for servers, and we would expect it to remain a prerogative of Xeon platforms. Meanwhile, back in the day, Intel offered software upgrades for its desktop processors to make them run faster. Unfortunately, that program faced criticism as Intel essentially crippled its perfectly fine processors. As a result, some might think the On Demand program mimics the ill-fated Intel Upgrade Service. Still, keeping in mind that the server world behaves differently than the client PC world and that we do not know the terms of Intel’s On Demand, we would not draw parallels here until we know all the details.
This assumes super high yields: that they can make enough chips that qualify as high-end models to lock down some and sell them as upgradeable. The take rate on upgrades are <100%, so selling some $1000 CPUs +$500 upgrades later might not beat selling it as a $1200 full unlocked CPU today on average.
When Intel’s secret sauce was world-leading manufacturing process, that might have flew, but do they have the capacity now?