Thumb2 was the most compact mainstream 32 bit ISA [1] when the competition was RV32IMAC, but recent RISC-V standard extensions -- such as those implemented in the Hazard3 core in RP2350 -- put RISC-V ahead.
I think long term failing to follow through with what they learned in Thumb2 in their 64 bit ISA will prove to be one of Ram's biggest (technical) mistakes. They thought they only competition they had to match was amd64.
[1] if you don't count Renesas RX as mainstream. It's a better-encoded variation on M68k/Coldfire with 1-8 byte instructions (and an actually good use of 1-byte for e.g. short conditional branches)
I think long term failing to follow through with what they learned in Thumb2 in their 64 bit ISA will prove to be one of Ram's biggest (technical) mistakes. They thought they only competition they had to match was amd64.
[1] if you don't count Renesas RX as mainstream. It's a better-encoded variation on M68k/Coldfire with 1-8 byte instructions (and an actually good use of 1-byte for e.g. short conditional branches)