and intel couldnt do that with the main stream platform ? come on. they COULD of, but they didnt. they stuck the mainstream at 4 cores, and created the HEDT segment so they could charge a premium for those extra cores, plain and simple.
more like as soon as AMD made 6+ cores mainstream( zen 1), intel HAD to do it as well. they had NO choice now.
Intel didn't want to go above 4 cores on their mainstream platform using 14nm. We know that Intel was working on an 8 core Canon Lake CPU years ago that obviously never made it to market because they still haven't made it to 10nm on the desktop. Intel thought they were going to be on 10nm all the way back in 2015:
Intel thought they would be a on 5nm by now, so we can see how badly they have stumbled with the process development. If Intel had been able to stick to their schedule, regardless of what AMD has done, there's no way we would have been looking at mainstream platform topping out at quad core on a 5nm node. AMD didn't force Intel to go beyond 4 cores on mainstream, they already had it on the roadmap to do it on 10nm. With the repeated screws up with 10nm, Intel wasn't able to release their 10nm 8 core CPU which should have been out in the 2015-2016 timeframe. So what AMD did force Intel to do, was go beyond 4 cores on 14nm, which has contributed to industry wide shortages.