Intel has been digging this hole for a while, due to the delay of 10nm, they have just shipped rebadged 14nm chips with higher and higher clock speeds. No way a brand new node can match these clocks with decent yields, so even with a healthy IPC increase, they are still fighting an uphill battle.
Not to mention consumer expectations. It seems as if we've been hearing "just wait until 10 nm" for so long, I think a lot of people have been expecting a big generational leap.
One thing that Intel has that AMD doesn't is graphics integrated into nearly all their chips and virtual GPU for KVM. If AMD can add something similar then Intel will be decimated, especially if AMD really starts to take over laptops. Unfortunately I don't even think Ryzen 3rd gen laptops exist right now.
Sure, AMD doesn't have mobile chips on Zen 2, but that's not far down the road and AMD does have a decent Zen+ mobile chip and it's being built into relatively high-end laptops (Lenovo T series, for example). I'm guessing AMD will release mobile chips on Zen 2 before Intel can fix their issues with 10nm, which will make for an interesting 2020.
I don't see why on-chip graphics support is necessary. An off-chip, independent graphics chip would surely suffice as redrawing the screen is loosely coupled with computation (describe screen, send to GPU, 60 times a second).
Other than some extra power draw needed to couple the 2 chips together, which I assume is minimal, splitting computation from rendering seems like a very good idea - where am I wrong? Would the extra monetary cost be significant - if so roughly by how much?
I would have much rather left the GPU out entirely and used the space for something else, but the high end Ryzens don't have any graphics supports. I'd have to go down to the APU units, where I'd trade off power.
There's little point to even having HDMI/DisplayPort outs on the board itself; they're unusable except for a small subset of APUs.
13" or smaller laptops don't really have room for a discrete GPU (I supposed they could fit one by shrinking the battery, but why would you do that) and IGPs are generally "free" compared to ~$50 for a cheap discrete GPU. Logically the GPU is a separate unit whether it's on the same chip as the CPU or a separate chip.
