I think you are missing the only point of the article: performance and compatibility are important; everything else is just aesthetics. As long as Intel can pr

I think you are missing the only point of the article: performance and compatibility are important; everything else is just aesthetics. As long as Intel can produce fast CPUs, with new features and while maintaining support for the existing binaries, everything is OK. Fixed or variable length, that's a matter for Intel engineers: users could, and should, care less.