Alan wrote:
It is a well-known fact that faulty software can overheat CPUs.
Not for a PC it isn't. I'm not sure where you got that idea from. Things like "halt and catch fire" are urban legend.
Yes, for the PC. The fact that many PCs are designed with marginal, at best, cooling is no secret at all. They are not designed to run with maximum CPU utilization 24/7. The GIMPS program, for example, is known to cause machines to overheat, and comes with a test for that particular effect. Many machines cannot participate in the GIMPS because of that. I suggest you research this well-known phenonmenon.
The HCF instruction is an old joke. I've been working with computers since 1969 or so, when I wrote machine language for the IBM 1401, and it was known then.
Mike