The x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) doesn't seem to be going anywhere. We've had people declaring the impending ascent of Arm or RISC-V for years now, and the market hasn't budged. By and large, people still want to buy Intel and AMD systems running x86 Windows. So, maybe what's needed isn't replacement but reform, and maybe that should be in the form of SHRINK.
That's not a new proposal—the International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) paper is dated June 2015, coming out of the 42nd annual symposium—but it might be new to you. It was to me. It was brought to my attention by LaurieWired on X, who points out that just 12 of the 1,000+ mnemonics (instructions) on modern CPUs make up 89% of compiled C/C++ code.
