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One thing I've been wondering while reading this and looking up some stuff on older CPU's for fun is this: most of the old* CPU's either ran slower but had 'fast' memory access (few cycles per access), or ran faster but had slow memory access (more cycles per access).
*) as in late 70's / early 80's CPU's
To me this feels like there was some sort of engineering trade-off being made. So the question becomes: what was the trade-off?
Could be interesting as this would shed light on whether or not the decision was actually a bad one at the time. Perhaps it just wasn't possible/feasible/economically viable for some reason to make a 'high'-clock speed/'low' cycle per instruction CPU. And if so, knowing the reason would be interesting.
Likewise, if it was possible but just not done, then it's still interesting to know why. I generally don't assume such decisions are the result of bad designers, but it's possible that is the reason. Which would beg the question, why did so many designers do things this way.
Like I said, interesting.
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