[RetroTechie]

Just a few years back, I checked out datasheet for an IC encountered in an USB card reader (newly bought).

Turns out a 8051 core was included (iirc clocked @ ~30 MHz, to control jobs like light busy LED on card read/write ops, some bus arbitration / priority settings, power management or the like).

Made total sense to encounter an ancient, 'fast', tiny 8-bit core there, even though unexpected.

There must be (and will be) an endless list of products including tiny CPU cores like that (eg., RFID tags come to mind).