I agree completely, and I would add that the compiler doesn't even need to compile down to a system/architecture that actually exists. You can make your own simple 'architecture' with a minimal list of instructions that wouldn't require much more then a loop and some switch statements to emulate, and you're free to design it in any way to make your life easier. For an architecture that's designed to be targeted by C, you likely don't even need registers and could just use memory operands for everything.