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The idea that Intel is “RISC under the hood” is too simplistic.

Instructions get decoded and some end up looking like RISC instructions, but there is so much macro- and micro-op fusion going on, as well as reordering, etc, that it is nothing like a RISC machine.

(The whole argument is kind of pointless anyway.)

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With all the optimizations going on, high performance RISC designs don't look like RISC designs anymore either. The ISA has very little to do with whatever the execution units actually see or execute.

It is baffling to me that byte-code is essentially a 'high level language' these days.

And yet, when I first approached C, it was considered a "high level" language.

Because the functional units are utilizing microcode? Or do you mean something else?

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