A nanometer is the same everywhere, but what you’re measuring isn’t. When they say 7nm, are they talking about the smallest feature they can produce, the minimum wire size, the minimum transistor size, the average transistor size, or...?
For an analogy, a GHz is a GHz everywhere but that doesn’t mean a 3GHz CPU is always faster than a 2GHz CPU.
If AMD can suggest that they are on smaller process size because they are measuring a smaller feature, why wouldn't Intel just start measuring the same feature on their chips? I have trouble believing they would stick to some principle about what is the right feature to measure at the cost losing out on marketing themselves.
7nm does not refer to any feature size. Process node names have continued to follow the pattern of the next node being named as roughly the current node divided by sqrt(2), even though density increases are no longer coming from simple uniform horizontal shrinks.
They might, just like the MHz marketing wars. But for now consumers don't care about "7nm" as a marketing figure enough for them to care if it's actually 7nm or not.
For an analogy, a GHz is a GHz everywhere but that doesn’t mean a 3GHz CPU is always faster than a 2GHz CPU.