I quite liked the i960 at the time. The later implementation, the i960CA, dropped all the capability features but was one of the first, if not the first, commer

I quite liked the i960 at the time. The later implementation, the i960CA, dropped all the capability features but was one of the first, if not the first, commercial microprocessor to offer superscalar execution. This required correct instruction placement, which was fun, but also fun. My vague memory is that real-world code could get something like 25% speedup from automatic scheduling alone, which was a lot better than the internally-competing i860.