"Better" depends on your metric. It is obviously easier to make a wide OoO superscalar implementation based on the Alpha ISA, but the archaic 32-bit x86 probab

"Better" depends on your metric. It is obviously easier to make a wide OoO superscalar implementation based on the Alpha ISA, but the archaic 32-bit x86 probably had slightly better code density. I'd love to know the assumptions behind the claim that a low-power Alpha couldn't be made. Maybe it was as simple as comparing a 32-bit CPU with 16 registers to a 64-bit CPU with 32 registers (4X the leakage for RF alone and > 2X the data path cost). Aarch64 is a bigger ISA than Alpha so I guess we crossed that bridge.