It was. (If you ever see this, thank you again, Mr Buchanan.)
> What I really wanted from a developer was the i960.
Interesting choice!
Given that Intel has a number of distinctive architectures in its historical portfolio, and is in trouble these days due to the competition from Arm and perhaps even RISC-V, I would love to see it do either experimental revivals of some of its architectures, or open up the specs for other ones.
(Someone there must bitterly regret selling off its Arm architecture license cheaply to Marvell; now, Marvell is worth more than Intel itself.)
How about modern die-shrinks of i860 and i960, or even just FPGA versions?
After the DEC/Compaq/HP implosion, Intel also ended owning the Alpha. I would not be at all averse to a resurrected Alpha chip, even if a very low-end chip on some old cheaper process tech.