> I'd expect compression to be too expensive It's not the kind of compression you might be thinking of. It's just 16-bit "shortcuts" for some of the common 32-

> I'd expect compression to be too expensive It's not the kind of compression you might be thinking of. It's just 16-bit "shortcuts" for some of the common 32-bit instructions. The impact in gate count should be minimal. In a lot of these applications you'll have the code in on-chip non-volatile memory which means reducing code size may also reduce chip area. I think with relatively little increase in gate count you could also make some sequences of two 16-bit instructions execute simultaneously, which could yield nice performance improvements for micro-controller cores. Also, you might be surprised at how "big" many micro-controllers are becoming these days.