Re: It bears repeating: Building a CPU that runs C fast considered harmful.
Back in the 70s one of the goals of processor designs would be to build instruction sets that would translate directly from high level language constructs. If you want to see what an advanced 1970s machine architecture looks like then try the ICL 2900 series processors. The problem with these architectures was that the real world mix of instructions tended to be mostly loads and stores with a handful of more specialized instructions so architectures were trending towards the RISC pattern anyway.
As for 'C' being a low level language -- it is. Its what used to be known as a Systems Programming Language, a glorified assembler. Its intended use is to write system components and languages and should never have been used for applications. It ended up as a general purpose language because of the way that mass computing evolved in the 1980. (....and yes, since you're asking, people do have to write assembler type stuff, you need it to start and run the processor(s) and other hardware subsystems.)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
