By all accounts GF are using a IBM's 7nm process which largely is the same as Intel's coming 10nm process (atleast on paper - GF seem to manage to screw up even 1:1 copies of another companies node somehow) the 7nm process has some slight advantages but largely they will just make it a little easier for designing purposes and have little impact on realworld performance or yields, etc.
You are massively underestimating Intel though - they've been working on all the stuff relevant to IF and so on for years (doesn't take 2 seconds of googling to find dozens of whitepapers they've published on that kind of stuff and pdfs detailing where they've worked with other companies on developing similar features etc.) they've just been artificially holding it back and trickling in feature updates to their own advantage - for instance there are changes in the way cores communicate that emerged in Knights Landing that they'd done all the work on years back and could have released much earlier.
