I came across a CPU bug that prevented Linux from booting on 3rd gen i3/i5/i7 CPUs. Did a bunch of printf debugging until I was right before the freeze. Then found something relevant in the CPU errata. It could be "fixed" by passing in noapic. I had a decent writeup on the old CentOS forums, but they're gone, and I don't have a copy of my writeup anymore.
I just checked an old note I found, maybe it was noclflush actually. Affected one or more versions starting with 2.6.32-754.
Maybe the Wayback machine archived it by any chance?
Depends when it was - Web Archive didn't seem to archive forums for a long time (maybe it does now?).
noapic seemed to be a really common 'fix' for CPU and BIOS issues back then.