Seriously, they need to read Worse is Better before they get into a bad situation trying to build The Right Thing. Maybe start cranking out x86 clones to sell off to Intel later on. That's a technology that's paid off several times. Even Intel couldn't market a superior processor [1] [2]. Sets the bar high for the little guys. ;)

Note: The manual in Wikipedia link describes full ISA and features. It was actually a bad-ass CPU design. I'd really like to know what process node the remaining one's run at. Couldn't find it, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960

[2] http://www.intel.com/design/i960/