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by clausecker 969 days ago
This one is as infamous as it is useful. Modern CPUs have the same instruction, but without the built-in loop (fused multiply-add).

Likewise, modern CPUs have dedicated CRC instructions, ARM Thumb 2 famously has an instruction for case statements (jump tables, instructions TBB/TBH), and many more.

The VAX was way ahead of its time, but failed to deliver on performance due to not having a pipelined or out-of-order architecture as is industry standard today.