It wouldn't be the first time Intel dropped a high performance consumer architecture and started upcycling their lower power designs instead. Netburst ran hot a

It wouldn't be the first time Intel dropped a high performance consumer architecture and started upcycling their lower power designs instead. Netburst ran hot and slow, and the Core microarchitecture which replaced it was derived from their mobile designs instead. Cove cores are huge and eat a lot of power and die area, which has hindered Intel significantly ever since falling behind in the foundry race. AMD's Zen architectures have been efficient with silicon, especially with the new c variants.