I wouldn't be too sure about that considering that 3060 has a "weird" MSRP and there presumably was some push back on it back at launch from AIBs who were left with very slim margins.
Is there any evidence of this.
We know that Samsung's 8nm was considerably cheaper than N7, no reason to suspect that this has changed with N6 so far.
It's been in active use for less than a year. The fact that it is an upgraded N7 doesn't mean much for its costs.
Wafer costs may be lower on 8nm. What about yields? Not sure what you mean about 6nm costs. Are you implying it’s more expensive than 7nm?
I'm not skeptical about that. I'm just not seeing this as a success for Intel as anything less than what we see in leaks would be a disaster. And it is looking increasingly likely that Alchemist will launch against Lovelace/RDNA3 which will change this "leaked" picture somewhat.
What I am skeptical about though is the proposal that Intel will be able to iterate faster than Nv/AMD - don't really see how that would be possible unless the meaning of iterating faster here is launching partial lineups each year (a bit like AMD did with GCN3/Polaris/Vega/RDNA1). In that sense yes, they may launch low end this year, mid range in 2023 and high end in 2024 with a new low end gen coming in 2025.
Alchemist isn’t launching against Lovelace. We probably won’t see the 4060 till Q1 2023. Either way Intel doesn’t need to beat the 4090.