>the performance/power hit for decoding x86-64 instructions is significant, just to decode to a RISC-like microcode anyway. However, that may be more of a statement about x86-64 than it is about CISC in general. Certainly, the days when CISC made any sense at all, mainly to ease assembly programming, is long gone

CISC still has an advantage in that it effectively compresses your instruction stream, meaning you can fit more in cache