"It's not like the chipmaker is in a hurry since Intel currently doesn't have anything to compete in that specific market. "
Except they do need to be in a hurry. By this time next year Zen 4 will be out supporting PCIe 5 and DDR5, both much more beneficial to high end workstation setups. Also if Zen 4 is able to perform, say, 20% faster than Zen 3, and AMD increases the desktop core counts to 16 (confirmed for laptops), 24, or even 32 cores, then the only real advantage Threadripper will have is an 8 channel memory controller and electrical PCIe slots...
If Intel is able to make the same kind of leaps in performance as AMD did with Ryzen, AMD could soon find themselves relegated to the "value HEDT" segment.