You can already do that. In gcc you can pass arguments like -march=pentium3 , and the code will use features of that cpu and won't run on pentium2, etc. Gentoo

You can already do that. In gcc you can pass arguments like -march=pentium3 , and the code will use features of that cpu and won't run on pentium2, etc. Gentoo linux uses this to slightly optimize binaries - because every gentoo user specifies these flags systemwide, customizes them for herhis cpu, and the whole system is recompiled taking them into account. Performance boost is negligible from my experience (but I used gentoo 10 years ago, maybe it changed).