[spronkey]

Multicore scaling on M1 doesn't appear to be as efficient as that on Ryzen - for example, the 4200U is able to beat the M1 in multicore tasks at quite a similar power draw, but gets soundly beaten in single core. Ryzen's big advantage over previous multicore implementations was infinity fabric - so clearly there's more to scaling than just the actual compute cores.

Don't forget that scaling up is also not just about frequencies, there are also packaging considerations - the CPU dies have to actually be able to dissipate the heat generated, and the package itself has to be able to do so as well. I'd expect that this is something AMD and especially Intel have a leg up over Apple with - although, considering they've already tread that ground it makes Apple's job a bit easier too.