> ...but 6/4 cores, respectively, were defective, so they get disabled. I don’t think they’re crippling fully functional hardware.

Hmm, but what if 3 cores are defective? If that can happen(?), then it seems one extra functional core is disabled to get to an even core number.

Apple's M1 GPUs are the first where I've seen the choice between 7 and 8 cores (as opposed to 6/8 or 4/8).