Comment by flohofwoe
OTH 8-bit floating point types are so hot right now in the GPU world:
https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-arm-and-intel-publi...
Also, a simple 8-bit CPU like the 6502 is just 3.5k transistors while simple 16-bit CPUs like the x86 or 68k are somewhere between 30k and 70k transitors (e.g. I wonder if a 6502 running at full throttle still requires less energy than an x86 or 68k doing the same work in the same time).
A minimal 16 bit system is something like a XAP [0] at 3,000 transistors. Incidentally, also a terrible architecture to program for.
I don't think any "real" x86 processor from the 286 onwards had under 100k transistors.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XAP_processor