It wasn't really very fast. Intel got away with releasing basically the same CPU year over year with minor incremental improvements for almost a decade before anyone caught up.

It's more than a decade. The first core2duo were released in 2006.

I think people are thinking of the first i5/i7 from 2008 when they do the comparison, unfortunately AMD was out of the run before that.

Fast as in about a decade of consolidated work while Intel ran away with all the money?

Apple bought PA Semi in '08, for example.

Tiger Lake has pretty impressive single-core and GPU performance. Tiger Lake H also promises to be very interesting.

Honestly, 2021 is going to be a good year for laptops and mini-pcs. I don't think any of the chip manufacturers have objectively bad silicon for those form factors anymore.