Ah, that's what I was looking for. I'm aware that most the resources are shared, but I also assume there have been design choices in other components to make SMT easier or faster, and possibly that increases their die size a small amount, or in general just complicates their design.
The question (which is ultimately unanswerable) is what would we have had Intel not chosen SMT as the path to pursue? If they had instead invested those resource into other areas (e.g. more cores) and never let SMT concerns enter into the discussion, how would those (theoretical) CPUs compare?
That's the CPU comparison I was alluding to in the prior comment, and why I noted AMD vs Intel (even with all it's other differences) may be the closest match up of that idea we'll see.
It wasn't meant as a rebuttal to anything, it was more a "wondering out loud" type of comment spurred by yours, about what could have been had different paths been taken.
If it was clearly outlined as 8 cores that support hyperthreads or 10 cores that don't for around the same price, what do we suppose most people would choose?
Part of the reason for the current status quo might be that hyperthreads are a big differentiator beteen AMD and Intel, and play towards Intel's strength (higher clock speeds at fewer cores).
We have something close to the proposed scenario starting to play out with AMD's offerings that support more cores and no hyperthreading, but it's not a perfect experiment because AMD's cores are also lower clock speed, and there's a lot of brand name loyalty currently.