This is silly. ILP doesn't matter because the HW has kept the same basic ISA with the same memory guarantees since forever. A lot of stuff goes on under the hoo

This is silly. ILP doesn't matter because the HW has kept the same basic ISA with the same memory guarantees since forever. A lot of stuff goes on under the hood to make C code execute quickly (also to make Java code execute quickly, etc). Hundreds of in-flight instructions does not matter when they all commit in order.