The i960 flopped in part because it was tied [0] to the I2O ('Intelligent I/O') project. (The 2 was always rendered as a subscript). I2O pushed a split-driver model in which the OS driver ('top half') did not talk directly to its hardware ('bottom half'), but queued I2O messages to the bottom half, which sat behind the i960 which did the proxy work.
IHVs had little interest in I2O as it would reduce Intel's costs for swapping out vendors and there was no demonstrable performance improvement. The latter was at least in part because the I2O infrastructure was immature in comparison to the IHV drivers. It eventually formed the model for I/O over Infiniband (where it did make sense).
[0] It's not clear if I2O was the original application for the 960 or it was a pivot for an otherwise homeless processor.
IHVs had little interest in I2O as it would reduce Intel's costs for swapping out vendors and there was no demonstrable performance improvement. The latter was at least in part because the I2O infrastructure was immature in comparison to the IHV drivers. It eventually formed the model for I/O over Infiniband (where it did make sense).
[0] It's not clear if I2O was the original application for the 960 or it was a pivot for an otherwise homeless processor.