One of the point of the article is that C is relatively high level by your definition. Basically it says that the C abstract machine has very little in common

One of the point of the article is that C is relatively high level by your definition. Basically it says that the C abstract machine has very little in common with most existing processor. moreover it makes the point that in the last decades of research for CPUs the focus was "make C go fast" wich ultimately cause meltdown.