Liam Proven <lpro...@gmail.com> writes: > On 18 September 2015 at 13:35, Lars Brinkhoff <l...@nocrew.org> wrote: >> I believe the VIA C3 had an undocumented feature to allow executing >> the underlying RISC instructions. > > [[Citation needed]] > > I've never heard of anything like this. Are you perhaps thinking of > the Crusoe family chips?
No, it was not Crusoe. I'm fairly sure it was VIA, and less sure it was the C3. Maybe Cyrix? Whatever was current technology around 2002 I guess. I remember reading the rumour that the RISC instruction set was accessible, and I contacted VIA about this. I got an email from someone I gathered was a company executive, and I signed an NDA to get the information. I got a paper document in the mail. Unfortunately, a few years ago I cleaned out the room where the document was stored. As I didn't think it was important at the time, I threw it away. I would love to provide a proper citation, but I searched the net and couldn't find anything to back this up.