In what way is RISC (a horizontal encoding designed to be efficient to decode) different from a 118-bit uop (a horizontal encoding of microarchitectural to-dos in subsequent pipeline stages)? If you can explain without adding yet another shape-shifting definition of what RISC is, or without pigeon-holing it, that would be awesome. From my perspective, a uOP and a RISC instruction are absolutely identical in intent, which is the point of RISC to begin with: the intent to be efficient to decode.