ARM was never a "speed demon"; it started out as a low power small-area core and clearly had more complexity and thought put into it than MIPS or RISC-V.

Over a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8235120

RISC-V will get there, eventually.

Strong doubt. Those of us who were around in the 90s might remember how much hype there was with MIPS.