[Taniwha]

If all you're doing is making a core with a little ROM, a USB interface and a flash interface chances are your design is pad limited - it probably doesn't matter which CPU you use provided it's tinyish

(oh and 8051 are a pain to work with, they've taken far too much of my lifetime, they need the stake thru the heart thing)

[snvzz]

>If all you're doing is making a core with a little ROM, a USB interface and a flash interface

An interesting observation is that RV32 has excellent code density. Meaning, in this sort of scenario, the ROM could be much smaller, or fit way more code at the same size.