The point I'm trying to make with the analogy is that the x86 instruction set is not representative of what the hardware is actually doing.
It is not "low level" because it is an abstraction or virtual platform that the processor exposes and then interprets using its own internal resources and programming interface (microcode). The x86 interface does not map closely to the actual hardware, just as the article states. It exposes a flat memory model with sequential execution and only a handful of registers.
Much the same way that the JVM exposes a virtual machine that doesn't directly map to any of the platforms that it runs on. It's an abstraction that is interpreted or compiled at runtime.
I don't understand why you think the two are so different just because the JVM is higher level.
