If failure really was a foundation for success, we reimplement all these technologies we software emulate now and where the patent has expired so we could implement them in hardware, including the firmware by hardbaking it as an ASIC (certainly ASIC memory is more dense than flash and obviously more so than SRAM).
For example, putting a pre-Y2K pentium on a chip with soundblaster, using diodes for power, and using wireless communication. It'd make the RISC-V ESP32 look wimpy.
I don't know if they put a soundblaster, but Intel's first generation of Edison boards is basically a 32nm pentium (complete with LOCK prefix bugs) combined with wireless stuff in the footprint of an SD card.
I wonder where the cutoff is where the value in the existing (legacy) x86 ecosystem beats the performance offered by a new platform like RISC-V.
The software stacks available are probably going to be more battle-tested. I'm also curious if there's more potential in resuscitating legacy code at the "application" level, if you knew you could run it in an embedded box which drew a fraction of a watt. Maybe all you really need is something that already existed as a DOS application.
However, it's comparing apples and freight locomotives. The main part of the x86 historic story revolved around desktop computing and keyboard-mouse-screen interactions[1], and the ESP32's is about internet-of-things and GPIOs, so even if the x86 module is beefier, it's tooling and connectivity may not be what you want out of the box if you were considering an ESP32.
On the other hand, we do see some places where they're clearly trying to hammer things like low-end ARM and ESP32 into vaguely more screen-and-keyboard things. I'm thinking of things like dedicated word-processor appliances (Alphasmart, etc.) or 300-in-1 knockoff consoles, where you could reasonably implement them as a 586-class CPU running off-the-shelf-software.
[1] Yes, I know full well there are loads of embedded x86 environments that look nothing like a PC. In university, our assembly language course involved setting up an 80186 developer board tethered to an ADM-3 terminal to be the world's most expensive digital clock.
For example, putting a pre-Y2K pentium on a chip with soundblaster, using diodes for power, and using wireless communication. It'd make the RISC-V ESP32 look wimpy.
The state of modern technology is shameful.