Those seem like poor reasons to justify 128-bit CPU hardware, over 128-bit emulation in software. In particular, MD5 use in new software is strongly discourage

Those seem like poor reasons to justify 128-bit CPU hardware, over 128-bit emulation in software. In particular, MD5 use in new software is strongly discouraged. You'll note that some of them are essentially identical with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/256-bit_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/256-bit_computing so they seem more guided by abstract arguments than concrete engineering reasoning.