I am sorry, this post has been a bit delayed, day job and all.
Yea I mean, if you look at Tigerlake, 15W barely serves 4 cores. AMD has 8 because not only it's smaller but more power efficient too.
The decisions are probably arbitrary as well. Marketing, profits, performance all play a role. 8+8+2 is possible too, but will it make sense as a brand, perf/watt, and in revenue terms?
Golden Cove, unless they change the design paradigm it's likely it won't be more efficient in MT. The growth in transistors don't result in corresponding increases in performance.
I won't bet on ESF being a big of a gain as SF. 10nm Icelake process sucked, so SF had lot more potential. SF brought 20% gains. ESF, maybe 7-10% on top of that?
For someone named IntelUser2000 you seem to be pessimistic regarding Intel. When Intel finalized TGL-U, 10nm was still an uncertainty and Renoir was not even announced or launched. More on this in a moment.
Is there some evidence DDR5 won't be ready this year? More and more news are coming about DDR5, recently from Micron/Crucial:
https://wccftech.com/crucial-ready-mainstream-ddr5-memory-modules-sodimm-udimm-4800-mhz-32-gb/
DDR5 will likely launched in Q4. If ADL-S is DDR5 only at launch, it will likely launch in January...a year after rocket lake. We will probably see a server variant, and if we are lucky mobile, but I strongly suspect desktop to launch in January. I hope I am wrong. Believe it or not, I LOVE to be wrong.
Now, back to TGL-U, when TGL was being developed, 10nm had poor yields, 10SF had just completed testing, and the best AMD had was the Ryzen 3000 mobile chips. TGL-U, as it stands, would walk all over Ryzen at the time, Intel also strongly suspected that it would also walk all over Zen 2. They were right. The issue is that the U parts were designed around quad core parts. Intel did not focus on 8-core parts due to 10nm issues at the time.
When the chip launched, a bunch of people piled on and said that the flagship TGL-U chips used too much power because they briefly spiked very high. Anyone that argued TDP and power usage in the same sentence needs to go back and understand that TDP != power usage. Tiger Lake actually appears to obey "TDP" for the first time ever. That is, A TGL-U chip will burst super high, but quickly drop once TDP is met. There is no issue with a chip consuming even 200W of power as long as the 15W TDP is met (I feel like yelling at AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, shoot, anyone making "processors" for allowing this to ben open definition).
AMD originally designed Renoir around 6 cores with much higher clocks. They quickly discovered they could lower clocks, but increase core counts. That was their strategy.
If you compare a Ryzen 4800U with 4 cores disabled vs. a top of the line TGL-U chip, the TGL-U chip will win. If you compare Intel's offering to AMD's chip with only 6 cores disabled, the Intel offering will win in most cases/be neck in neck with the rest.
That is pretty much all I have to say. Now, before you begin your attack, I have a ton of hardware in my household, and you should know and understand that the only Intel CPU that exists is in an aging my spouse uses. I hold no Intel stock, and I held AMD stock for years on and off until tonight when I sold at $89. Please note that I will be buying back, but I know the market, and I know that the stuck will dump (it already has

)
AMD has a fantastic product. However, TGL-H actually competes VERY well with Cezanne, (the 11800H beats the 5900HX in Geekbench, Cinebench, and a few other benchmarks that I'm privy to. Don't bother asking, the chip is dropping
soon) and that is why I think Alder Lake will surprise us. If you actual evidence to the contrary I'd love to debate it, as it is likely something I've not seen. Until then, as I see leaks I will post them here. Love you all!
EDIT: My actual thoughts are: Alder Lake Desktop in January, Mobile in Q2, and workstation/server variants between the two. I think Alder Lake will have Xeon offering, but Sapphire Rapids/Ice Lake will rule the roost for high end. ADL-S will be mid-range to low end. I know not much has leaked out regard that, but IMO that is a sensible play.