In a typical computer system, is it possible to manually change the CPU cycle counter to a specific value? The most obvious method would be to check the counter value and then run NOP or other redundant instructions until the value is as desired, but if the required value is a long distance from the current one this may take an infeasible amount of time - I am looking for something more realistic.
I doubt most architectures would contain an instruction for doing this, but (perhaps because the answer is obvious) I can't find a clear answer elsewhere.