Acronym · Business & Market
SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)
A distinct sellable configuration of a product, differentiated by speed grade, feature fusing, temperature range, package or memory size. One silicon die commonly supports several SKUs.
- Type
- Acronym
- Domain
- Business & Market, Product lifecycle
Notes
SKU proliferation raises inventory and test cost, so portfolio rationalisation is a recurring operations exercise.
Overview
A SKU, short for stock keeping unit, is a distinct orderable version of a product with its own part number, price and specification, such as a particular speed grade, core count, temperature range, package or memory size. In the chip industry one die design commonly supports several SKUs, created by sorting tested parts into performance bins and by enabling or disabling features with fuses or firmware. The SKU is what customers order and what supply planning, pricing and inventory systems track.
How it works
Chips from the same design differ slightly after manufacture: some run faster, some leak less, some have a defective core or cache block. Testing measures these differences, and binning sorts parts into groups that meet different specifications. A product team then maps bins to SKUs: the fastest parts become the premium speed grade, parts with a failed core can be sold as a lower core-count SKU with that core fused off, and parts that meet extended limits become industrial or automotive temperature grades.
Feature fusing and configuration also create SKUs on purpose. One die may be sold with or without a graphics engine, a security feature or a wider memory interface, with the choice burned into one-time programmable fuses at test so that the customer cannot change it. Packaging adds more variants, since the same die can go into different packages or be paired with different memory. With chiplet designs, each chiplet can be tested and binned separately and the final SKU decided at assembly according to demand.
Every extra SKU has a cost. It needs its own part number, test flow, datasheet values, qualification coverage, inventory and forecasting, and it complicates end-of-life notices later. Product teams therefore balance the revenue gained by selling every usable part against the overhead of managing many variants.
Examples
- A processor family where the same die is sold in several core counts and clock speeds, with defective or unneeded cores fused off.
- A microcontroller offered in commercial, industrial and automotive temperature grades, each a separate orderable part number.
- Sony shipping the PlayStation 3 Cell processor with one of its eight SPE cores disabled to raise usable yield, as reported in the product binning literature.
- A chiplet-based processor whose final SKU is chosen at assembly from separately binned chiplets.
Why it matters
Product line managers, pricing managers, demand planners and test engineers all work with SKUs: product teams define the line-up, test teams implement the bin and fuse rules, and planners must keep each SKU's supply matched to its demand even though bin splits vary from lot to lot. A good SKU strategy lets a company sell nearly every working die at a sensible price.
In the chip lifecycle, SKU plans are drafted at architecture, when fuse options and redundancy are designed in, refined after first silicon from characterisation data, implemented in the test programme for production, and retired one by one through product change and end-of-life notices.
It matters most to: ATE Test Program Developer, Demand Planner, Pricing Manager, Semiconductors, Product Line Manager, Product Marketing Manager
Common confusions
- Not the same as binning
- Binning is the test step that sorts parts by their results. A SKU is the commercial product a bin is mapped to; several bins may feed one SKU, and one bin may serve several.
- Not the same as die revision or stepping
- A stepping is a new version of the silicon itself, with changed masks. SKUs are different sellable configurations, which may all use the same stepping.
- Not the same as a part number in the bill of materials
- A customer's internal part number may cover several qualified supplier SKUs. The SKU is the supplier's own orderable item.
Sources
- Early And Fine Virtual Binning (Noam Brousard, proteanTecs, 8 September 2020) (opens in a new tab), Semiconductor Engineering, 2026-10-22
- US10909652B2: Enabling product SKUs based on chiplet configurations (Intel Corp) (opens in a new tab), Google Patents (US Patent and Trademark Office record), 2026-10-22
- Product binning (Wikipedia) (opens in a new tab), Wikimedia Foundation, 2026-10-22
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