Rocket Lake painted 2 problems that Intel need to address quickly in my opinion,
1. 14nm is simply no longer competitive. On the surface, Intel is able to squeeze performance out of it to match competition. However, the penalty is high power consumption and heat output. For the top end to go up to 100 degs or more is nuts. Even if the chip is cheap, the cost of the motherboard and cooler to sustain performance is going to be very high.
2. Cypress Cove is 1 gen behind competition. I recall Cypress Cove is derived from Sunny Cove introduced in Ice Lake U, and clearly it was competing against the likes of AMD's Renoir. WIth Zen 3, AMD upped the bar further in terms of performance vs efficiency, and clearly Rocket Lake is unable and not enough to keep up.
While I look forward to see what Alder Lake can bring to the table, I am at the same time skeptical. While Intel's 10nm Super Fin seems to be doing well, I actually think they are driving 10nm towards the same path as the 14nm. Pretty sure they will push 10nm very hard with Alder Lake, but at least they have the small cores to claw back some efficiency under light load. But against a 5nm Zen 4, assuming AMD don't drop the ball, they are likely still going to be on par if not behind competition.
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