Intel does not appear to have any serious problem in their capabilities of logic design (even if e.g. the launch of Sapphire Rapids had multiple delays due to design bugs and insufficient validation before the tape-outs), but until now there has been no evidence of Intel recovering their great CMOS manufacturing process disadvantage vs. TSMC.

The Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs would have been superior to the AMD Genoa, except that the CMOS process used by Intel to make them provides such functional dependencies between the clock frequency and the power-supply voltage and between the power consumption and the power-supply voltage, that whenever the CPU in in a state where the clock frequency is limited by the power consumption, i.e. whenever it runs a multi-threaded application, the clock frequency of a Sapphire Rapids CPU is ridiculously low in comparison with that of an AMD CPU made by TSMC.

This leads to low performance in multi-threaded applications. Moreover, the Intel CMOS process has low yields, which forces them to make only Sapphire Rapids CPUs with fewer cores, smaller cache memories and higher prices than AMD Genoa.

As long as Intel remains handicapped by their inferior manufacturing processes, they will not be able to make competitive products.

At the end of this year, Intel is expected to launch Meteor Lake the first product made (partially, the integrated GPU will be made by TSMC) using the next Intel manufacturing process.

This is their chance to regain some of the lost ground. It remains to be seen if they will succeed.

Until now, the next Intel manufacturing process (Intel 4) does not seem to be in very good shape, because Intel had to cancel the desktop variant of Meteor Lake and replace in with a "Raptor Lake Refresh", presumably because "Intel 4" does not provide yet high enough clock frequencies, exactly like Intel had to replace for desktops Ice Lake with Comet Lake and Tiger Lake with Rocket Lake.