Indeed. This is how ripgrep works. It's compiled for just plain `x86_64`, but it looks for whether things like AVX2 are enabled. And if so, uses vector algorithms for substring and multi-substring search. The nice thing about dealing with strings is that the "coarse" requirement is already somewhat natural to the domain.

But, this functionality is absolutely critical. It doesn't even have to be automatic. Just the ability to compile functions with certain ISA extensions enabled, and then only call them when the requisite CPU features are enabled is enough.

In a nutshell: https://github.com/BurntSushi/memchr/blob/8037d11b4357b0f07b...