Transmeta CPUs used a VLIW architecture with a software layer that decoded x86 instructions into VLIW instructions. The software worked a bit like a JIT where o

Transmeta CPUs used a VLIW architecture with a software layer that decoded x86 instructions into VLIW instructions. The software worked a bit like a JIT where optimizations would be applied to frequently running code. I would credit them for pushing Intel (and AMD) to optimize for power savings rather than raw speed, because Intel started making significant perf/W improvements. Transmeta processors were (I believe) the first x86 processors to automatically vary voltage and clock speed multiple times per second. In fact, I wrote a small utility that would display the current clock speed on your taskbar in a graph because it changed so rapidly.