You're absolutely right: ARM1 code density would have been much, much worse than 8088 (which Thumb partly solved later on) and the 32 bit bus wouldn't have been

You're absolutely right: ARM1 code density would have been much, much worse than 8088 (which Thumb partly solved later on) and the 32 bit bus wouldn't have been practical. Edit: By complete coincidence browsing some related Z80 came across your memcpy comparison which is fascinating. The step up to the ARM1 is remarkable. I think I remember Herman Hauser saying that Acorn approached Intel for an x86 chip with higher memory bandwidth but were rebuffed and that led to the development of Arm.