The last few generations of x86 MacBooks were exceptionally bad implementations in this regard, and some of the better thermal behavior of the Apple Silicon MacBooks are things that they could just as easily done with an Intel CPU, if they had felt like it. For example, the Intel MacBooks was extremely eager to ramp its power consumption to the max, while the ARM MacBook slowly increases clock rate, one step at a time, such that it only hits max power after a long time of sustained demand.
I think that might have been Intels doing. They were on 14nm for 5 years or so, with each new 14nm release pushing the power budget and squeezing slightly more performance out of any corner they could find. I assume the CPU ramping was just another part of this approach. If the CPU ramps up faster it will seem fast to users and it’ll look faster in short benchmarks like Geekbench.
