[gaius]

Again that is how it was back in the day, CPU and supporting hardware, OS, compiler, standard libs etc all co-engineered. Tho' in the case of the Amiga the CPU was part of the supporting hardware, the heart of the system was something else that farmed work out to the CPU or a co-pro as appropriate...

[walterbell]

Is there a good online reference for this design?

[gaius]

There is an excellent book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Future-Was-Here-Commodore-Platform-...

http://bogost.com/writing/blog/the_future_was_here/