Intel famously followed a "tik-tock" development cycle where they would move their existing designs to their next gen fabs, before updating the design.

So yes, you absolutely can separate them, and that's how it was historically done. Though Intel fell behind on this philosophy.

And those transitions were not seamless. Intel controlled the whole stack so they made it seem like it was. You obviously can’t separate design and manufacture at this level and scale, to even suggest it displays a massive lack of understanding of how this space operates.

If you don’t know how the space operates, why are you commenting?