Quoting Jason Thorpe,

> I have this defined in all of my kernels ... However, I'll be damned if I 
> can find any place where it makes a difference:

That's what I thought too. However, as Charles pointed out to me, there
is a use for the FASTER_NOP (which is conditionally defined depending on
DUMMY_NOPS) in /sys/arch/i386/isa/vector.s, which is included near the
end of locore.s. It's not obvious at first sight, but it's there.

- Frank