This may be an unpopular opinion, but making ancient x86 features unreliable strikes me as a good thing. Virtual 8086 mode is an awful virtualization solution, as you can't enter protected mode from within it. This makes it only good for running a subset of DOS apps: either real-mode-only apps or those written to an unspecified subset of DPMI [1]. Ryzen CPUs are easily fast enough to emulate them. And if that's not enough, x86 has had real virtualization for years now, with a functioning protected mode (and long mode!) in addition to real mode.
We're long overdue for a simplification of the PC platform. Having CPUs out there with broken legacy features accelerates the migration away from those features. Hopefully this leads to dropping them outright at some point.
We're long overdue for a simplification of the PC platform. Having CPUs out there with broken legacy features accelerates the migration away from those features. Hopefully this leads to dropping them outright at some point.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Protected_Mode_Interface#H...