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There was no change. Presumably Intel always used a x86 CPU for their baseband, because they own all the patents on that stuff so they don't need to pay any royalty on it.

Chances are this isn't even a true x86 CPU, just some ad-hoc smaller version of it. Wonder what cpuid returns on it :)

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unlikely. intel's baseband originates from infineon which intel bought a couple of years back. Hence it probably was a pure ARM baseband until intel purchased them and insisted on using x86 cores?! very weird move, particularly as i'd assume it also still has ARM cores in the baseband, making it a mix of x86/ARM cores.

A lot of the acquired expertise is just the analog stuff, which obviously doesn't care what the processor is very much.

If you're shipping one of the highest-dollar chips in the iPhone, I'm sure cutting out ARM is one of the juiciest moves possible. That would have been a very big target for them.

Illegal instruction exception, then randomly mocking the instruction stream?

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