Here is my Intellihash theory,
...lets assume that particular chip have 1 out of 100 pipelines that contain impurity as limiting factor,
if software recognize failing pipeline and disable it then maybe remaining 99 pipelines can run on 30% faster clock,
or some particular pipeline may work fast but draining more than usual power and spreading heat to rest of chip.
So this intelligent algorithm will find most optimal configuration to squeeze highest speed or lowest power drain for each chip by disabling and scaling freq. ... [+nonsense]
This is already being done, nothing new here. This also doesn't begin to explain why the hashrate would increase as difficulty grows.
I see that some people are concerned with selling miners "too cheap" and having low profit, however there is the simple trick to this, if ken just delay their shipment and use first chips to actm farm.
This means miners would not be sold too cheap compared to network hash rate.
It just should not delay too much to upset the customers.
This also has a name already. It's called "fraud."
The problem with your fraud is it fails Occam's razor. There are much simpler & more elegant ways to commit fraud. It also requires having chips that hash -- the missing ingredient in all of your scenarios.