[fc417fc802]

Yes. It's been done before for Intel CPUs. https://misc0110.net/files/cpu_woot23.pdf

It's interesting to think about the sorts of things we could do if we had low level control over our hardware. Unfortunately things seem consistently headed in the opposite direction.

[seanw444]

Hopefully RISC-V changes things a bit.

[colejohnson66]

RISC-V wouldn’t help here at all. There’s nothing about RISC-V that prevents a CPU manufacturer putting in custom instructions and not documenting them.

[seanw444]

I understand that, but my sliver of hope is that since it's an open architecture, there will be manufacturers that make very hackable versions of it.