[phyrrus9]

This is interesting, and shows how dumb Intel is sometimes. (Another example: x86 in general)  This can certainly give people trouble when trying to reverse-engineer code.

There are more methods to obfusticate code, but this can be used in conjunction with them for some good results.

Intel has this strong urge to keep everything backwards compatible with the 1980s, when they were doing well as a semiconductor company. Their thought is if they can always go back to the 80's with a simple command sent to the keyboard, they will always do well.

That's called virtual 8086 mode. If we get desktop-speed ARM CPUs, Intel will either be forced to update, or they'll just die.

We actually had desktop speed RISC CPU's, and we still do. The ones of the past were called PowerPC, and the ones of the present are called SPARC