The aspects of x86 that mean an x86 chip necessarily has to be worse than an ARM chip are very minor and mostly just relate to using a bit more energy on decode

The aspects of x86 that mean an x86 chip necessarily has to be worse than an ARM chip are very minor and mostly just relate to using a bit more energy on decode. The difference in engineer years in designing and testing a complicated x86 chip that works correctly versus an ARM chip, however, are pretty big.