It is absolutely fair. The ballpark figure for losses over Meltdown/Spectre fixes is about 20%. This means, on a laptop, you produce 20% more heat or your battery's charge lasts 20% less.
AMD's worst fix for Spectre/Meltdown lost about 3%, and that was for the original Zen 1. Would you rather have 20% of your CPU/battery just evaporate without warning, or 3%?
On top of this, Intel does not make any really competing parts: Intel laptops cost more and flat out perform worse per dollar, with a lower upper limit on maximum performance.
The next chance Intel has at being competitive is with their first full scale Cove family core (instead of the Lake/Cove hybrids, which isn't going to be out until Series 12.
Side note: Series 12 is already shaping up to be bad, the most cost-effective desktop part is going to go toe to toe with Zen 4 per "real" thread, and have 4 big SMT2 cores and 8 little Atom-like SMT1 cores (so 16 threads, with half of them on smaller and slower power efficient cores, so like how ARM does it), but the competing Zen 4 Ryzen will be 8 real full scale cores (and also 16 threads), which ends up putting it in the ballpark of being around a third faster with the same power usage and pricing.
Intel must compete, and I hope Pat Gelsinger can turn the ship around. CPUs take about 3-4 years, from early planning to retail shelves. He became CEO this year, so I don't think they have anything they can do (other than drop pricing significantly) until the Cove that goes up against Zen 6 comes out (which is 2025+).
AMD's worst fix for Spectre/Meltdown lost about 3%, and that was for the original Zen 1. Would you rather have 20% of your CPU/battery just evaporate without warning, or 3%?
On top of this, Intel does not make any really competing parts: Intel laptops cost more and flat out perform worse per dollar, with a lower upper limit on maximum performance.
The next chance Intel has at being competitive is with their first full scale Cove family core (instead of the Lake/Cove hybrids, which isn't going to be out until Series 12.
Side note: Series 12 is already shaping up to be bad, the most cost-effective desktop part is going to go toe to toe with Zen 4 per "real" thread, and have 4 big SMT2 cores and 8 little Atom-like SMT1 cores (so 16 threads, with half of them on smaller and slower power efficient cores, so like how ARM does it), but the competing Zen 4 Ryzen will be 8 real full scale cores (and also 16 threads), which ends up putting it in the ballpark of being around a third faster with the same power usage and pricing.
Intel must compete, and I hope Pat Gelsinger can turn the ship around. CPUs take about 3-4 years, from early planning to retail shelves. He became CEO this year, so I don't think they have anything they can do (other than drop pricing significantly) until the Cove that goes up against Zen 6 comes out (which is 2025+).