Why Modern Code is Slow

Because of the entire security nonsense, modern linkers do not support the classic statically linked executables, which were superfast. So all code is compiled the PIE bloatware. Of course that crap goes on top of already slow MMU and meltdown/spectre fixes (which are just an excuse to sell your new CPU). Remember these old COM files? They were ridiculously fast, compared to the modern ELF garbage, where just the header takes more space than the code itself.

Remember: security experts are the consumer's biggest enemies. Common people don't care about security, they care only about apps running fast, liek they used to run in C64.

>>12
Calling pipelining a "minor architectural thing" shows you are woefully ignorant on the topic of CPU design. Maybe come back to this conversation after you have designed a processor ;-). Yes single core performance is plateauing, but there are very few workloads that are entirely sequential AND not currently I/O bound. Computer industry thrives on the "easy" performance gains, and I foresee at least a lifetime's worth of meaningful improvements, even if they aren't in areas I expect today.