The problem still is: one of the units responsible for increasing the processor performance was not working correctly. So the increased performance of the processor was obtained by not working correctly. That qualifies as cheating - if not by intent but then by nature of the design. It remains to be investigated how much of the security implications of their design choices was or could have been known to Intel. The fundamental attack concept was known for many years.

No, it just doesn’t. You’re diluting the meaning of that term to irrelevance. There are plenty of other words that adequately describe what happened - sloppy, careless, short-sighted. Cheating isn’t one of them.

You can easily cheat, without bad faith, by being sloppy or careless. You can also cheat in bad faith and call it being sloppy or careless. Breaking rules often has nothing to do with intent.

It is working correctly. A side channel is unfortunate, but in no way comparable to a missed page fault.