It’s Still Intel
As we said, this is the last Intel-based iMac you’ll likely ever see, so if you really need to stick with Intel — and there are some really good reasons to do so right now — then don’t hold your breath for an 11th-gen CPU in an iMac next year.
This is especially important if you plan on running Windows in any way, since Apple has already announced that Boot Camp will be completely out on the new Apple Silicon Macs, meaning it simply won’t be possible to natively boot Windows anymore, and it’s likely going to take some time even to figure out the situation with virtualization — both from the perspective of VMware and Parallels updating their apps for the new ARM-based architecture, but also whether Microsoft will even permit Windows to be licensed in this manner.
There’s also no reason to fear that Apple’s ARM transition will leave its Intel Macs out in the cold — Apple has promised to continue to support Intel-based Macs for a very long time, and there’s no reason to assume that developers are going to be dropping support for Intel binaries anytime soon either.