Just look at the Intel iAPX 432 [1] as example for such an alternative CPU design, this was supposed to be the actual 8080 successor and 8086 was just supposed

Just look at the Intel iAPX 432 [1] as example for such an alternative CPU design, this was supposed to be the actual 8080 successor and 8086 was just supposed to be a temporary throwaway solution until the 432 was ready. The rest is history as they say ;) Meanwhile, the C programming model turned out a pretty good fit for very different hardware architectures. All 3D API shader languages have a C heritage for instance, despite GPUs being radically different than traditional CPUs. In the end only three things matter in hardware design: throughput, throughput and throughput ;) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432