Indeed, you can consider x86 to be an instruction compression scheme in which case it is a net win for caching (though minor). What Intel had for years was a p

Indeed, you can consider x86 to be an instruction compression scheme in which case it is a net win for caching (though minor). What Intel had for years was a process advantage. Apple would have paid a premium for that. Not desktop CPU premium, but a premium nonetheless. And Intel wouldn't be a distant also-ran in the mobile SoC space. If you read the Oral History of x86 documents the same arguments almost killed the first few Intel CPUs. The memory guys were worried they'd offend their memory customers and CPUs were not a high volume or high margin business.