Comment by bigyabai

I think we're talking past each other here. I already mentioned this in my original comment:

  ARM is typically [...] more efficient at idle.

From Intel's perspective, the decision to invest in x86 was purely fiscal. With the benefit of hindsight, it's also pretty obvious that licensing ARM would not have saved the company. Intel was still hamstrung by DUV fabs. It made no sense to abandon their high-margin datacenter market to chase low-margin SOCs.