Caruso is a neat hack of an idea but, if I'm not mistaken, isn't it already being used in other modern processors? I thought the failure of selling Crusoe processors eventually led to the company mainly selling its patents to others who wanted to implement their techniques? I know they VERY recently sold some licenses to Sony (cell processors), NVIDIA, NEC for some of those technologies and that they have made some kind of 10-year patent deal to allow Intel to use their technologies, too. I wouldn't doubt that ARM might have eventually gone back over and made a license deal with them, too. I don't know that, though--I just imagine that the bumps up in ARM speeds in recent years might be one heck of a coincidence, maybe?

Remember that, under the classic model of how processors are designed, adding instructions to a processor means adding more silicon and metal to the processor which means an additional pathway for heat dissipation and/or power inefficiency. I'd rather that ARM/OMAP only bother adding instructions that don't really hurt performance and power.. and put more emphasis on tweaking up the processing speed (either electrically or by adding some smarter instructions--not necessarily for emulation's benefit).

I figure, in the end, you'll get emulation even if it's by software means without some special x86 hardware support.. any improvement in speed overall would help emulation along. My opinion is that I would rather have native apps perform better, as much as I love emulators.