> I can't really fault the 8086 designers for their decisions, since they made sense at the time. But if you could go back in a time machine, one could certainly give them a lot of advice!

Thanks for capturing my feeling very precisely! I was indeed thinking what they could have done better with the same approximate number of transistor and the benefit of a time traveler :) And yes the constraints you mention (8080 compatibility, etc) indeed limit their leeway so maybe we'd have to point the time machine at a few years earlier and influence the 8080 first