The thermally feasible sounds completely silly to me, like it's surely more feasible than in a denser node temperatures wise: you only get better by spreading components apart. We are long past the point were a smaller node has twice the power efficiency and can be as cool if not lower temp than the previous one, that scaling is truly dead.
Signaling speed is limited, so you have to design your core arrays to given size. With more compact manufacturing process you could put more transistors in given space. Like AMD have to cut 7nm Zen2 L1i to half to accommodate more space for increased op cache - they did build their 7nm core to be just as big as they could. They can't manufacture that core in less dense manufacturing process as structures grow too big to fit in signaling covered area.
This have been true for entire silicon manufacturing era, they invent more advanced manufacturing node which makes possible to put more transistors in given space resulting more advanced design being able to operate at same clock speed. Going that route backwards seems absurd to me, something like backwards Moore law. Some people proposing idea of backporting cpu cores to older manufacturing process did get fired from Intel but idea still lives strongly in forums.
Do Intel have said anything about backporting whole cpu cores? What they need to do is to make new 14nm cpu core which could implement their after Skylake-invented IP which could be implemented in 14nm design, whole 10nm cpu core would be way too big for 14nm. Or other way around, if they could implement their 10nm cpu core in 14nm manufacturing process and achieve similar clocks their 10nm design is horribly off from it's target.
But also Intel do have history of trying to build too big cpu cores, IPX432, Tejas, whole IA64 - I actually do get feeling that their whole Cove-series of cores are also too big, they did try to catch more IPC with big design which limited their clock headroom which resulted very inefficient design. Design times are long so they are married to their too big of a cpu core for few years to come, probably they could fix their screw up only with 7nm cpu designs.
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