The really remarkable thing about the 6502 is how the designers managed to get such strong performance out of such an economical design. It used less than half

The really remarkable thing about the 6502 is how the designers managed to get such strong performance out of such an economical design. It used less than half the transistors of the Z80. As a result it really was the design that helped to kick start the home computer market. The original Arm team were big fans and the ARM1 followed in that tradition of making the most of the resources available. I guess we could say there would be no ARM without the 6502. (Disclosure - I wrote the original post)