Any other examples of this? I remember the secret sauce being a process advantage over the competition, exactly the opposite of making old tech outperform the state of the art.
Intels surprisingly fast 14nm processors come to mind. Born of necessity as they couldn't get their 10 and later 7nm processes working for years. Despite that Intel managed to keep up in single core performance with newer 7nm AMD chips, although at a mich higher power draw.
For like half of 14nm intel era, there was no competition on CPU market in any segment for them. Intel was able to improve their 14nm process and be better at branch prediction. Moving things to hardware implementation is what kept improving.
This isn't the same as getting more out of the same over and over again.
Or today with Alder Lake and Raptor Lake(Refresh), where their CPUs made on Intel 7 (10nm) are on par if not slightly better than AMD's offerings made on TSMC 5nm.
Back in the day, Intel was great for overclocking because all of their chips could run at significantly higher speeds and voltages than on the tin. This was because they basically just targeted the higher specs, and sold the underperforming silicon as lower-tier products.
Don't know if this counts, but feels directionally similar.
Any other examples of this? I remember the secret sauce being a process advantage over the competition, exactly the opposite of making old tech outperform the state of the art.