Just noting, even if instructions were 100000000000000 bits long, reserving a single bit for 16-bit encoding would waste 50% of the instruction space.
Just noting, even if instructions were 100000000000000 bits long, reserving a single bit for 16-bit encoding would waste 50% of the instruction space.
It's not wasted when it makes programs overall smaller, as it does.
It is wasted if its reduction is less than that of alternative uses for that instruction space.
Such as?
There is still plenty of unused 32 bit (30 bit) opcode space.