5 ms·

I'd be surprised if x86 is still a major thing in 5 years, and very surprised if it was still a major thing in 10 years. It's had a good run, but it's 40 years

I'd be surprised if x86 is still a major thing in 5 years, and very surprised if it was still a major thing in 10 years. It's had a good run, but it's 40 years old (with, granted, many extensions and improvements). Sometimes you need to start with a fresh sheet of paper. Apple's M1 was the first shot across the bow, and I believe AMD has an ARM-like architecture in development as well.

passivate 5y ago
I've been hearing that about ARM for more than a decade. Whats different now?
- Miraste 5y ago
  Nothing's different, this is the culmination of the last decade's work. These changes are slow, but ARM is now as fast or faster than x86 in several contexts while being vastly more efficient, and looks likely to continue improving at a better rate. ARM has started appearing in laptops, desktops, and servers. x86 is running out of bastions.
  - passivate 5y ago
    If ARM is getting vastly more efficient then why is the battery life of smartphones not getting vastly-better? Where is the benefit to the end user?
    - Miraste 5y ago
      I said ARM is vastly more efficient than x86, not previous implementations of ARM. You can see this in action in the new MacBooks, which do indeed have like 4x the battery life of the x86 versions.
      - passivate 5y ago
        Ah yeah I misread that. I don't think M1 is 4x the battery life of x86 though. Any examples of specific cases? For e.g The M1 Air vs Acer swift (i7-1065G7) - 1.9 W vs 1.8 W at idle, and 30W vs 27 Watts at full load. The power consumption looks to be about on par. But maybe you're thinking of some other measure of efficiency? Also, I'd like to say that M1 is at 5nm fabrication - which is not an advantage of ARM. I'm sure x86 will get there eventually. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-2020-M1-Entry-Review-Apple-M1-CPU-humbles-Intel-and-AMD.508057.0.html#toc-power-management https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-2020-M1-Entr...
        Miraste 5y ago
        I'm factoring in performance. The 1065G7 has a similar power profile to the M1 but it's much slower - both perceptually and in benchmarks. I like Passmark as a quick and dirty comparison tool, and it has the M1 at 1.7x the 1065G7, putting it in the realm of (but faster than!) the i9 Macbook Pros. 4x runtime was off the top of my head and it looks like that was an overestimate, but it's still over 2x. Also I've used those things and there's no way they get 11 hours. You're right about the process node. AMD's new laptop chips are on 7nm and they compare more favorably than Intel's. x86 isn't dead yet, but the trend is still not in its favor: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16226/perf-trajectory.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16226/perf-trajectory.png 1065G7: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-1065G7+%40+1.30GHz&id=3466 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-1065G... M1: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+3200+MHz&id=4104 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+320... 9880H: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i9-9880H+%40+2.30GHz&id=3456 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i9-9880H...
- spiderice 5y ago
  > Whats different now? It's powering the laptops and desktops of the most valuable tech company in the world and outperforming even the best predictions from a year ago.
  - passivate 5y ago
    That is just the fabrication aspect, 5nm is not going to be an advantage for long.
- sofixa 5y ago
  A consumer company started selling laptops with ARM chips, so obviously everything will change! /s More seriously, companies like AWS have developed ARM-based chips in-house, and they seem to be very good (cheaper, faster than x86 equivalents) for specific workloads. That will certainly help with adoption, but i sincerely doubt x86 will stop being the dominant architecture. Maybe the consumer market will see a significant shift towards ARM. But not the real money maker, datacenter.
  - passivate 5y ago
    Well said, I agree with you.
KronisLV 5y ago
In contrast, i'd be surprised if x86 were to disappear in 5 or 10 years from the mainstream. Personally, i think that there's too much similarly old software that's build first and foremost for x86, porting which would take bunches of time and effort. Furthermore, ARM is only big in the consumer markets as a part of SoC designs, which are bad for a variety of reasons, notably, limited upgrade possibilities. For example, i cannot go to an Internet store within my country and purchase an ARM-compatible motherboard and buy an ARM CPU separately. As for Apple's M1 offering - i think it's a good start to demonstrate the feasibility of ARM, but i'd say that ARM will most likely remain popular mostly for phones and tablets. I'd bet on maybe another 20-40 years as the timeframe for ARM to replace x86 and for the latter to become irrelevant.
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  > Personally, i think that there's too much similarly old software that's build first and foremost for x86, porting which would take bunches of time and effort. I just got an M1 iMac this week. So far I haven't found any of my old x86 stuff that won't run. I'm positive that such software exists, but nothing I use on a regular basis. While I haven't done any formal benchmarks, most of it feels faster under emulation than it did on my previous iMac (which, to be fair, was a few years old).
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    Then why does Windows lag behind with its x86 emulation capabilities when running on ARM? For example: https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performance/page2.html https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performa... and https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/03/27/windows-10-on-arm-benchmarked-both-natively-and-with-x86-emulation/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/03/27/windows-10-on-arm-b... (disclaimer: these are from a few years back, because seemingly there isn't a lot of interest in the topic) I feel like there's more to Apple's success, in part because of them having full control over the whole ecosystem, from the hardware, to the OS, to the languages that they'd like to support within their platform. Doing that for near-arbitrary hardware (e.g. everything for server hardware, to regular workstations, to budget off-brand laptops) would be far less likely to succeed on such a scale. Unless everyone ditches Windows in favour for other OSes that would play nicely with ARM, or unless Windows manages to make leaps in regards to emulation technology, i don't see ARM going mainstream for the kind of personal computing that people do on their PCs (as opposed to mobile devices, where ARM clearly dominates). Plus, there's an argument to be made that we shouldn't even need emulation in the first place, just software that's sufficiently portable to be compiled for a new target, or written in a platform-agnostic enough way that it can be easily ported over to a new architecture.
ChuckNorris89 5y ago
>I'd be surprised if x86 is still a major thing in 5 years Then get read to be surprised. X86 ain't going nowhere in the next 5 years.

passivate 5y ago

I've been hearing that about ARM for more than a decade. Whats different now?

Miraste 5y ago
Nothing's different, this is the culmination of the last decade's work. These changes are slow, but ARM is now as fast or faster than x86 in several contexts while being vastly more efficient, and looks likely to continue improving at a better rate. ARM has started appearing in laptops, desktops, and servers. x86 is running out of bastions.
- passivate 5y ago
  If ARM is getting vastly more efficient then why is the battery life of smartphones not getting vastly-better? Where is the benefit to the end user?
  - Miraste 5y ago
    I said ARM is vastly more efficient than x86, not previous implementations of ARM. You can see this in action in the new MacBooks, which do indeed have like 4x the battery life of the x86 versions.
    - passivate 5y ago
      Ah yeah I misread that. I don't think M1 is 4x the battery life of x86 though. Any examples of specific cases? For e.g The M1 Air vs Acer swift (i7-1065G7) - 1.9 W vs 1.8 W at idle, and 30W vs 27 Watts at full load. The power consumption looks to be about on par. But maybe you're thinking of some other measure of efficiency? Also, I'd like to say that M1 is at 5nm fabrication - which is not an advantage of ARM. I'm sure x86 will get there eventually. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-2020-M1-Entry-Review-Apple-M1-CPU-humbles-Intel-and-AMD.508057.0.html#toc-power-management https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Air-2020-M1-Entr...
      - Miraste 5y ago
        I'm factoring in performance. The 1065G7 has a similar power profile to the M1 but it's much slower - both perceptually and in benchmarks. I like Passmark as a quick and dirty comparison tool, and it has the M1 at 1.7x the 1065G7, putting it in the realm of (but faster than!) the i9 Macbook Pros. 4x runtime was off the top of my head and it looks like that was an overestimate, but it's still over 2x. Also I've used those things and there's no way they get 11 hours. You're right about the process node. AMD's new laptop chips are on 7nm and they compare more favorably than Intel's. x86 isn't dead yet, but the trend is still not in its favor: https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16226/perf-trajectory.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/16226/perf-trajectory.png 1065G7: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-1065G7+%40+1.30GHz&id=3466 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-1065G... M1: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+3200+MHz&id=4104 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M1+8+Core+320... 9880H: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i9-9880H+%40+2.30GHz&id=3456 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i9-9880H...
spiderice 5y ago
> Whats different now? It's powering the laptops and desktops of the most valuable tech company in the world and outperforming even the best predictions from a year ago.
- passivate 5y ago
  That is just the fabrication aspect, 5nm is not going to be an advantage for long.
sofixa 5y ago
A consumer company started selling laptops with ARM chips, so obviously everything will change! /s More seriously, companies like AWS have developed ARM-based chips in-house, and they seem to be very good (cheaper, faster than x86 equivalents) for specific workloads. That will certainly help with adoption, but i sincerely doubt x86 will stop being the dominant architecture. Maybe the consumer market will see a significant shift towards ARM. But not the real money maker, datacenter.
- passivate 5y ago
  Well said, I agree with you.

KronisLV 5y ago

In contrast, i'd be surprised if x86 were to disappear in 5 or 10 years from the mainstream. Personally, i think that there's too much similarly old software that's build first and foremost for x86, porting which would take bunches of time and effort. Furthermore, ARM is only big in the consumer markets as a part of SoC designs, which are bad for a variety of reasons, notably, limited upgrade possibilities. For example, i cannot go to an Internet store within my country and purchase an ARM-compatible motherboard and buy an ARM CPU separately. As for Apple's M1 offering - i think it's a good start to demonstrate the feasibility of ARM, but i'd say that ARM will most likely remain popular mostly for phones and tablets. I'd bet on maybe another 20-40 years as the timeframe for ARM to replace x86 and for the latter to become irrelevant.

Turing_Machine 5y ago
> Personally, i think that there's too much similarly old software that's build first and foremost for x86, porting which would take bunches of time and effort. I just got an M1 iMac this week. So far I haven't found any of my old x86 stuff that won't run. I'm positive that such software exists, but nothing I use on a regular basis. While I haven't done any formal benchmarks, most of it feels faster under emulation than it did on my previous iMac (which, to be fair, was a few years old).
- KronisLV 5y ago
  Then why does Windows lag behind with its x86 emulation capabilities when running on ARM? For example: https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performance/page2.html https://www.techspot.com/review/1599-windows-on-arm-performa... and https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/03/27/windows-10-on-arm-benchmarked-both-natively-and-with-x86-emulation/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2018/03/27/windows-10-on-arm-b... (disclaimer: these are from a few years back, because seemingly there isn't a lot of interest in the topic) I feel like there's more to Apple's success, in part because of them having full control over the whole ecosystem, from the hardware, to the OS, to the languages that they'd like to support within their platform. Doing that for near-arbitrary hardware (e.g. everything for server hardware, to regular workstations, to budget off-brand laptops) would be far less likely to succeed on such a scale. Unless everyone ditches Windows in favour for other OSes that would play nicely with ARM, or unless Windows manages to make leaps in regards to emulation technology, i don't see ARM going mainstream for the kind of personal computing that people do on their PCs (as opposed to mobile devices, where ARM clearly dominates). Plus, there's an argument to be made that we shouldn't even need emulation in the first place, just software that's sufficiently portable to be compiled for a new target, or written in a platform-agnostic enough way that it can be easily ported over to a new architecture.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago

>I'd be surprised if x86 is still a major thing in 5 years Then get read to be surprised. X86 ain't going nowhere in the next 5 years.