Comment by panick21_

> means you binary bigger .... meaning more memory bandwidth and cache

Except this isn't actually true.

> Does getting rid of dramatically increase the performance ceiling? Probably not.

No but it dramatically DECREASES the amount of investment necessary to reach that ceiling.

Assume you have 2 teams, each get the same amount of money. Then ask them to make the highest performing spec compatible chip. What team is gone win 99% of the time?

> And the flexibility of being able to implement a complex operation in microcode, or silicon is essential for CPU designers.

You can add microcode to a RISC-V chip if you want, most people just don't want to.

> The real benefit of RISC-V is anybody can use it.

That is true, but its also just a much better instruction set then x86 -_-