Intel's approach to CPU design and core count was influenced by several factors over the years, and it's important to understand the context behind their decisions. Firstly, before AMD's Ryzen lineup shook up the market, Intel was indeed limiting the core count in their mainstream consumer processors to, for the most part, four cores. This was primarily the case with their popular Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs from various generations prior to the 8th Gen Core lineup, which marked the mainstream entry of 6-core and higher CPUs from Intel. Here are a few reasons why Intel maintained a quad-core design in their consumer CPUs for a long time: 1. **Market Dominance**: Before the arrival of AMD's competitive Ryzen CPUs, Intel dominated the market. They enjoyed a period of minimal competition, which led to a lack of urgency in drastically changing their designs or core counts. With no significant pressure, Intel incrementally advanced their CPUs with each new generation while maintaining higher profit margins. 2. **Manufacturing Efficiency**: Intel's production during this period was highly optimized for quad-core CPU designs. By sticking to a familiar architecture and process, they could ensure high yields and maintain quality control, which may have been more challenging with higher core counts. 3. **Focus on Single-threaded Performance**: Consumer applications and most popular games traditionally benefited more from higher single-threaded performance rather than multi-threaded performance. Intel, therefore, focused on optimizing the performance per core, including developing technologies like Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost to squeeze more performance from each core. 4. **Thermal and Power Constraints**: Increasing core count can result in higher power consumption and thermal output. With the silicon technologies of the time, Intel may have found the trade-off between additional cores and the resulting increased heat and power usage unfavorable for mass-market consumer CPUs. 5. **Segmentation Strategy**: Intel maintained a product segmentation strategy, where higher core-count processors were relegated to their enthusiast and workstation lineups, like the Intel Core i9 and Xeon processors. Consumers needing more cores and threads for professional workloads were directed to these more expensive CPUs. AMD's introduction of their Ryzen CPUs, with more cores at competitive prices, disrupted Intel's status quo. This significantly influenced consumer expectations and pushed Intel to increase the core count in their subsequent CPU releases. It is essential for technology enthusiasts and industry observers to consider that product design decisions, like CPU core count, are not solely technology-driven but are also shaped by business strategy, market competition, and consumer demand.