Insofar as they are immune, is it because of some sort of foresight and/or better engineering practices, or because the immune chips are simply cheaper, less sophisticated designs?
Hint: The fact that ARM ranges from "completely immune" to "affected by the less-common Meltdown" gives away the answer.
People make mistakes, "punishment" isn't the way forward here. There are alternatives out there to Intel, but kindly remember that other chip makers also released hardware that is susceptible. Also, you can trust this won't be the last time issues such as this come up.
The only thing Intel deserves to be punished for here is their "nothing to see, move along" posture.
At the technical level, these are subtle bugs that affect most of the industry (with the Meltdown bug affecting a more restricted set of chips). It's a mess we'll be paying for for years to come, but not one that Intel is especially culpable for.
