[btilly]

Exactly the point. We can compile any piece of software that we want into hardware, but after that it is easier to change in software. Given the variety of unexpected ways in which hardware is used, in practice we went up moving some of what we expected to do in hardware, back into software.

This doesn't mean that moving logic into hardware can't be a win. It often is. But we should also expect that what has tended to wind up in software, will continue to do so in the future. And that includes complex decisions about the priority of interrupts.