Dummy operations handling of Intel processor

Question

Admittedly, I have a bit silly question. Basically, I am wondering if there are some special mechanisms provided by Intel processors to efficiently execute a series of dummy

Answer 1

No. They are decoded and executed as normal instructions; there is hardware support to remove the false dependency that would otherwise be introduced on the EAX register for the single byte NOP, 0x90 (which is really xchg eax, eax), but that's all.

Reference: Intel(R) 64 and IA-32 Architectures Optimization Reference Manual - section 3.5.1.8, "Using NOPs".