[morepork]

We did go from 16 to 32 and now to 64 bit, so there have been some significant changes in that time, plus all the new instructions added. But ARM chips are taking over, I think there are now more than 10 ARM chips for every x86 one sold

[Squeeze2664]

There's also an ARM CPU inside modern x86 processors, little-known fact. Look up AMD's Secure Processor.

[samus]

ARM chips were widespread already long before they reached performance parity with x86, and actually already before the smartphone market took off.

There always have been vastly more chips of another architecture for every x86 chip. Most of the output of fabs with older processes are microcontrollers, most of which use some bespoke instruction set.

[ta988]

A lot lot more than a factor 10 if you count microcontrollers.