Interesting point. So on the one hand we have all these layers in the CPU to abstract away things in the ISA that are not ideal for block level implementation..

Interesting point. So on the one hand we have all these layers in the CPU to abstract away things in the ISA that are not ideal for block level implementation... but on the other hand compilers are still targeting that high level ISA... and ironically they also have their own more general abstraction, the intermediate representation. I'm probably not the first or last to suggest this but... it seems awfully tempting to say: why can't we throw away the concept of maintaining binary comparability yet and target some level of "internal" ISA directly (if intel/AMD could provide such an interface in parallel to the high level ISA)... with the accepted cost of knowing that ISA will change in not necessarily forward compatible ways between CPU revisions. From the user's perspective we'd either end up with more complex binary distribution, or needing to compile for your own CPU FOSS style when you want to escape the performance limitations of x86.