> To make an efficient modern processor, you want to larger more specialized instructions that do more per clock cycle No, not really. The large specialized in

> To make an efficient modern processor, you want to larger more specialized instructions that do more per clock cycle No, not really. The large specialized instructions in x86 run across many, many clock cycles. And IIRC, compilers will often generate a sequence of simple instructions rather than one complex instruction, because the CPUs are so much better at executing sequences of simple instructions. (And yeah, as others have pointed out, of course high end RISC-V chips have multiply and divide instructions with dedicated multiply and divide hardware.)