https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_i960
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems#Tagged...
http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burr...
I'm sure there were similar design in the 1990s, but I don't have references ready off the top of my head like the above.
Personally, I would call it hardware-assisted gc if we consider hardware acceleration to be things like GPUs, crypto accelerators, etc.
You're right that starting with a simple architecture makes things much easier. 8086 for example operated in 16-bit real mode (segmented memory), and so the memory layout was trivial compared to 32-bit protected mode in x86.
I haven't taken any graduate architecture courses yet, but my assumption that they would go into more detail on the development of CPUs through history.