Ok, but as far as I can see M1 cores aren’t 20% slower than Intel or AMD cores. They are faster than Intel cores, and in the same ballpark although in aggregat

Ok, but as far as I can see M1 cores aren’t 20% slower than Intel or AMD cores. They are faster than Intel cores, and in the same ballpark although in aggregate slightly slower than AMD threadripper. This would seem to negate your analysis, if you are simply talking about the trade off between power consumption and performance. Also you seem to ignore that higher performance per watt means you can get higher absolute performance before you hit the thermal ceiling.