Custom hardware language machines fall behind firmware on general purpose CPUs because the latter have an order of magnitude faster hardware releases. There wer

Custom hardware language machines fall behind firmware on general purpose CPUs because the latter have an order of magnitude faster hardware releases. There were all kinds of clever architectures coming out in the 1980s- LISP machines, prolog computers, Masspar, Thinking Machine, etc. The first release tended to be economically competitive. But the next release 3 to 5 years later fell behind Moores law.