Modern x86 processors use about 10% of their power budget for instruction decode (translate variable-length x86 machine code into one or more fixed-length micro

Modern x86 processors use about 10% of their power budget for instruction decode (translate variable-length x86 machine code into one or more fixed-length microcode instructions and remap registers). The primary modern benefit of this setup is that the decode logic can optimize code at the cost of power. If x86 could get rid of the x86 instruction set and compile directly to something similar to uOPs, then some power reduction use and core area reduction could be achieved, but tooling cost would be immense.