[tptacek]

That has less to do with it than the fact that it was the smallest ISA I could find that GCC would readily compile down to.

[kaeso]

I would have loved it to be some old ARM ISA to use it as a testcase for Avatar[0]. On the same topic, FIE paper may be an interesting reading for msp430 lovers[1] (but it needs source for symbolic execution, so doesn't directly apply here).

[0] http://www.s3.eurecom.fr/tools/avatar/

[1] https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity13/technical...