What was the cheat in the 2024 Intel situation? The TomsHardware article and the Phoronix article they linked were quite vague. (Not to say I have any doubts, just curious, hadn’t heard of this one).

Intel basically benchmaxxed their compiler optimizations. They used detailed knowledge of the benchmark to make their compiler generate machine code to do better on the benchmark in a way that was not beneficial for non-benchmark scenarios.