title: How many 1-byte NOPs can Skylake execute at one cycle
body: <p>I'm aligning branch targets with NOPs, and sometimes the CPU executes these NOPs, up to 15 NOPs. How many 1-byte NOPs can Skylake execute in one cycle? What about other Intel-compatible processors, like AMD? I'm interested not only in Skylake but in other microarchitectures as well. How many cycles may it take to execute a sequence of 15 NOPs? I want to know whether the extra code size and extra execution time of adding these NOPs worth its price. This is not me who adding these NOPs but an assembler automatically whenever I write an <code>align</code> directive.</p>
  <p><strong>Update:</strong> I have managed the assembler to insert multibyte <code>NOP</code>s automatically.</p>