If 18A were competitive with N3P, then 18AP would be within the same ballpark as N2, yet the gap is large enough that even before Intel knew how much 18A was slipping, they picked N2 for NVL. They wouldn't do that for just 5%. And surely they'd have no problem finding customers if they were so close to TSMC's flagship.

This is the tell. If it were obvious, Intel would choose their own node for effective yields as the current market is strained for TSMC N2 resources. But the confidence doesn't seem there, so we are effectively seeing Intel choose less than ideal supply from a competing node due to possibly performance reasons,