Just about everyone who seems to know what they're talking about says the ISA doesn't matter, that in order for ARM to compete with x86's IPC and for x86 to bec

Just about everyone who seems to know what they're talking about says the ISA doesn't matter, that in order for ARM to compete with x86's IPC and for x86 to become more efficient, both architectures have landed in the same middle ground and that the differences we see between the architectures in products are down to choices made outside of the instruction set, like process node or choice of IP blocks. I recall an interview where Jim Keller said that it would be possible to take Zen and replace the x86 instruction decode block with an ARM one, with little in the way of change to the rest of the design. If Intel really start feeling the pressure, they could transition to a licensing model for x86 rather than the weird legacy contract thing going on with AMD. That could make things more interesting. I wouldn't count it out just yet.