It absolutely is an embarrassment. There is no reason the one CPU couldn't do both jobs, one where the CPU powers up every 250ms and does the low-power work for

It absolutely is an embarrassment. There is no reason the one CPU couldn't do both jobs, one where the CPU powers up every 250ms and does the low-power work for a fractional microsecond and then shuts down, and the other just by staying awake longer. You still want a custom chip that can power various subsystems up and down on command. But there is no need to be big and clunky. What this indicates is a management failure: they could not get a team together that could manage both low-power and high-feature software in the same stack. It is somewhat reminiscent of the Apollo missions where they had one computer in command module, and a completely different (and massively clunkier) one in the rocket. Von Braun boasted that only one wire connected the command/service modules to the rocket, which was only there to trigger the explosive bolts.