> P550 is, like, what, only a year old?

No, it was released to customers in June 2021, almost five years ago.

https://www.sifive.com/press/sifive-performance-p550-core-se...

It has take a while for this core to appear in an SoC suitable for SBCs, as Intel was originally announced as doing that and got as far as showing a working SoC/Board at the Intel Innovation 2022 event in September 2022.

Someone who attended that event was able to download the source code for my primes benchmark and compile and run it, at the show, and was kind enough to send me the results. They were fine.

For reasons known only to Intel, they subsequently cancelled mass production of the chip.

ESWIN stepped up and made the EIC7700X, as used in the Milk-V Megrez and SiFive HiFive Premier P550, which did indeed ship just over a year ago.

But technically we could have had boards with the Intel chip three years ago.

Heck we should have had the far better/faster Milk-V Oasis with the P670 core (and 16 of them!) two years ago. Again, that was business/politics that prevented it, not technology.