Yep. It's le bon ton to frown at the x86's baroqueness, but other ISAs had their share of bizarre ideas as well: e.g. MIPS had no interlocks until MIPS-II, so e

Yep. It's le bon ton to frown at the x86's baroqueness, but other ISAs had their share of bizarre ideas as well: e.g. MIPS had no interlocks until MIPS-II, so every instruction had a delay slot. I personally liked the SIB byte from x86-32, it's a neat way to repurpose an ACU into basically another ALU.