No comparison with competitor models other than the previous granite version strongly implies that it does not compete well with other comparable models. At least this is the most reasonable assumption until data comes out to the contrary

Qwen 36 is effectively a pocket sized frontier model. It's really surprising for me anyway

Because Qwen 3.6 pushes way above its weight. Granite 8B is impressive, but Qwen still wins on raw capability, especially for coding.