I guess that this would be a good time for the regular, all-time-classic, 555-ish trolling...
Who would really need a microcontroller, even of a sub-nanosecond machine cycle one (yet, don't fool yourselves; almost nobody programs in .ASM nowadays --so you certainly can kiss that sub-nanosecond machine cycle flow goodbye!), after the introduction of that legendary 555?
Long live the NE555N timer IC (and the year 1971)!
Long live the Real Men, still proudly going on programming in assembly language or straight in machine code!*
-George
[ * ]: Fooled ya! :-P