Determining CPU features / cache organization from userland

[Joseph Koshy]

Hi -hackers,

I'm looking for ways that a userland program can determine the CPU
features available on an SMP machine -- processor model, stepping
numbers, supported features, cache organization etc.

For example, on some x86 processors the CPUID instruction could be
used to determine some of these parameters, but using this instruction
in an SMP context is a little tricky since we do not know which CPU 
gets to execute the instruction.

Would you know of any existing APIs, in use in other OSes, for
retrieving this kind of information?

Regards,
Koshy
<jkoshy at freebsd.org>