Nope. x86 decode to micro-ops is a trivial amount of die. It is constant (not completely true but true enough for all useful purposes) while transistor count h

Nope. x86 decode to micro-ops is a trivial amount of die. It is constant (not completely true but true enough for all useful purposes) while transistor count has gone through many doublings. In some cases x86 is a slight win, as it can function as a form of instruction compression, slightly reducing i-cache pressure. There may be architectural limitations (like strong store ordering) that are relevant but in practice it hasn't made a huge difference.