Well, the fact that x86 encoding is suboptimal is also a dead debate. If AMD had had the resources of Intel, or if Intel hadn't botched IA-64 so badly and actually licensed it to AMD, x86-64 would have better instruction encoding, no question. (seriously, like all of the unused/slow instructions have 1 byte opcodes)
Anyway, my point is that pure CISC designs (as much as that means anything) obviously lost ages ago. Pure RISC also lost as frequencies plateaued, or perhaps more accurately never really won; CPU designers care about what makes CPUs more performant, not abstract ideology. So we get stuff that runs counter to RISC ideals: SIMD, VLIW, out-of-order execution, and highly specialized instructions like AES and conditionals.
Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. I still think RISC and CISC have value as terms, however vague, because they succinctly summarize trade offs well. I fully realize that today's processors are hybrids of many techniques, and that's a good thing.
Anyway, my point is that pure CISC designs (as much as that means anything) obviously lost ages ago. Pure RISC also lost as frequencies plateaued, or perhaps more accurately never really won; CPU designers care about what makes CPUs more performant, not abstract ideology. So we get stuff that runs counter to RISC ideals: SIMD, VLIW, out-of-order execution, and highly specialized instructions like AES and conditionals.