You're correct, smaller features will improve performance. What I'm saying is that it is becoming so expensive and difficult to get high yield on smaller featur

You're correct, smaller features will improve performance. What I'm saying is that it is becoming so expensive and difficult to get high yield on smaller feature size that from a product generation to product generation other performance features (like the ones I mentioned before) will be the main factor to improved performance. You can see this with Intel right now: CannonLake (10nm) has been delayed due to yield issues but KabyLake, Coffee Lake & Whiskey Lake (14nm) are all improvements over the original 14nm product (Skylake).