Ok - I haven't read the article - maybe they're talking about some processor where the manufacturer actually provides a datasheet. Most companies do. I think even AMD does; I know you can get datasheets for the ARM implementations, and most other embedded processors...
...but has anyone found any recent Intel processor datasheets (ok, maybe at this point they'd be several volume databook libraries - but you know what I mean)?
The last time I tried to find something recent from Intel, the most recent datasheet of any kind I could find (one that listed technical stuff like registers, pins, opcodes, etc - not just some basic figures and marketing junk), I think the latest I found was for the Core2 Duo/Quad series - then nothing after that?
Is there some secret trick to getting these? All I could figure at the time was that you had to be part of some program or something, maybe with an NDA - or an actual motherboard manufacturer or something? But then again, how would you write a compiler without the information about opcodes and such?
Now honestly - I don't need such datasheets. But I wanted to look at something "cutting edge" or relatively new (and really, the Core2 datasheet was good enough for this) - and compare it with old datasheets for like the 6809 or 6502 or Z-80, old-school 8-bit processors (the ones I grew up with) - just to see how things have changed (or haven't) and how "insane" things have gotten.
More like a lark for a laugh kind of thing that anything else.
It just struck me that I couldn't easily find them for recent Intel stuff...at least, not easily on the web (but again, maybe I wasn't looking in the right area, or there are other reasons at play).