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20 years ago IBM PowerPC was still a contender too. With Apple no less. The x86/64 solo reign was more like 15 years. But I miss it too. The 90s with all its

20 years ago IBM PowerPC was still a contender too. With Apple no less. The x86/64 solo reign was more like 15 years. But I miss it too. The 90s with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC. I still have several of those here at home :) Computers have become boring and it's nice ARM is shaking things up. I wonder if M1 will ever be fully supported though. With full unrestricted video, 3D and AI acceleration. There seems to be a lot of Apple secret sauce in these processors.

oblio 5y ago
> The x86/64 solo reign was more like 15 years. Solo, yes, probably 15 years. But domination? Probably starting with the IBM PC in 1981 (ok, make that 1982 or 1983 to allow for the sales ramp up) until 2020. That's a very long run for a computer architecture. I expect that the next architectures to rise to the top will be even more entrenched. We're way past computing's early years, childhood and adolescence.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I was responding to the original OP who mentioned Intel only. I doubt it'll remain that stable. The mobile OSes have already embraced a number of platforms, not even all ARM based. Android seems to be quite flexible regarding architectures with its pre-compilation. I think this is a sign of what's to come. RISC-V is also an upcoming player and if it's successful it may spawn more fully open contenders. As we move to more AI integration there's a whole new lifecycle opening up too in terms of ML coprocessors. We're in the same situation as early computers with multiple vendor-specific solutions. I think on the security side there'll also be more hardware signature checking rather than the chain-based checks of Secure Boot. Rather than the OS checking if a program is legit, the CPU could do it (already done on some custom like consoles) So I don't think computing is really mature at all. It just has had a stable phase for a while.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  Yes, PCs are around since 1981, but if you looked around, they were not that commonplace outside of businesses and quite rare in private usages. There was the age of the home computers, first 8-Bit (Atari, Commodore, TI), then the 68k Machines, the first ARM. In parallel, all the great workstation vendors with their RISC chips. The PC for home usage really started only in the 90ies, scientists would use workstations. It was only towards the end of the 90ies, that x86 caught up with them and well into the 2000 years, when they overtook them. It was actually AMD who dealt the killing blow with the Athlon and especially the Opteron. At that time, Intel was pushing Ithanium as the architecture for professional usage and kept x86 onto 32 bit with more game-optimized processors (P4).
  - justin66 5y ago
    No offense, but that is all either wrong or ahistorical. You write about personal computing history like someone who experienced it after the fact and solely through blog posts. (are you writing about the PC revolution as you experienced it in some country other than the United States?)
    - prescriptivist 5y ago
      Not sure what's wrong with OPs account. Care to give examples? It roughly aligns with my experience during that time.
      - ngcc_hk 5y ago
        So am I. Op seem ok.
      - justin66 5y ago
        > Not sure what's wrong with OPs account. Pretty much everything. The OP made a number of statements about the various platforms' marketshare over time which were inaccurate if applied globally, but might have been accurate in a certain country, hence my question to them. All of this in service of an idea - that x86 hasn't been dominant for four decades - which is so absurdly counterfactual that it's silly to argue about. I mean, you guys know that these sales figures are public, right? Regarding the assertion that PCs were ever "quite rare in private usages." There are some pretty good charts of the various home computers' marketshare available here: https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/4/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/4/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/5/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/5/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/6/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/6/ It occurs to me after sharing those that one could look at those charts and assume all those IBM PCs were going to businesses (that's an AWFUL LOT of businesses!) but I don't have all day to spend on gathering this data... research game sales in the mid eighties if you have doubts about this! They were servicing a dying C64 and Apple II market, and a rapidly growing x86 market. x86 did not wait for nineties (how is this even an argument... jeez). I still have the Athlon XP 3200+ system I built, but AMD didn't deal any kind of "killing blow" with anything. That's extremely silly. AMD did an admirable job of forcing 64-bit adoption on the PC a bit sooner than Intel would have liked (and driving multicore!), but x86's domination in the marketplace did not have to wait for that. In terms of marketshare, ARM didn't matter much until it became an embedded standard. Regarding 68k, which the OP brought up for some reason, I offer this: https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/7/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/7/
raverbashing 5y ago
> with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. But some things like SPARC were just headache-inducing https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-window/ https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-windo...
- tyingq 5y ago
  It was pretty amazing to enjoy 64 bit computing and before Intel had it. They were more popular in some niches, for a time, than anything else.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    Yes Intel's attitude is too much based on marketing sometimes. "Consumers don't need 64-bit" (and trying to promote Itanium) "Consumers don't need ECC RAM" It holds back the industry now that they are the only PC platform. PS: I think Itanium was a really good idea but again marketing made it unviable. They wanted to position it purely for servers, just at a time where there was a real cost focus on servers using commodity hardware (e.g. from Google)
- lmm 5y ago
  > And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. I agree with this part, but the sparc register windows are completely reasonable and obvious.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    It might be reasonable, but it's a chore, especially on linux to work with it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902
    - mst 5y ago
      "Avoiding needing to spill registers to the stack" is a focus of much optimisation work in lots of places - and, yeah, it's absolutely work but the performance gains can still be worth it. Plus I'd argue that SPARC is enough simpler to work with than x86 in other ways that you could look at it as "spending your complexity budget somewhere else" more than it being more headache inducing. (though admittedly I cut my teeth on assembly on an ARM2 so basically every modern architecture is kinda headache inducingly complicated to me ;)

oblio 5y ago

> The x86/64 solo reign was more like 15 years. Solo, yes, probably 15 years. But domination? Probably starting with the IBM PC in 1981 (ok, make that 1982 or 1983 to allow for the sales ramp up) until 2020. That's a very long run for a computer architecture. I expect that the next architectures to rise to the top will be even more entrenched. We're way past computing's early years, childhood and adolescence.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
I was responding to the original OP who mentioned Intel only. I doubt it'll remain that stable. The mobile OSes have already embraced a number of platforms, not even all ARM based. Android seems to be quite flexible regarding architectures with its pre-compilation. I think this is a sign of what's to come. RISC-V is also an upcoming player and if it's successful it may spawn more fully open contenders. As we move to more AI integration there's a whole new lifecycle opening up too in terms of ML coprocessors. We're in the same situation as early computers with multiple vendor-specific solutions. I think on the security side there'll also be more hardware signature checking rather than the chain-based checks of Secure Boot. Rather than the OS checking if a program is legit, the CPU could do it (already done on some custom like consoles) So I don't think computing is really mature at all. It just has had a stable phase for a while.
_ph_ 5y ago
Yes, PCs are around since 1981, but if you looked around, they were not that commonplace outside of businesses and quite rare in private usages. There was the age of the home computers, first 8-Bit (Atari, Commodore, TI), then the 68k Machines, the first ARM. In parallel, all the great workstation vendors with their RISC chips. The PC for home usage really started only in the 90ies, scientists would use workstations. It was only towards the end of the 90ies, that x86 caught up with them and well into the 2000 years, when they overtook them. It was actually AMD who dealt the killing blow with the Athlon and especially the Opteron. At that time, Intel was pushing Ithanium as the architecture for professional usage and kept x86 onto 32 bit with more game-optimized processors (P4).
- justin66 5y ago
  No offense, but that is all either wrong or ahistorical. You write about personal computing history like someone who experienced it after the fact and solely through blog posts. (are you writing about the PC revolution as you experienced it in some country other than the United States?)
  - prescriptivist 5y ago
    Not sure what's wrong with OPs account. Care to give examples? It roughly aligns with my experience during that time.
    - ngcc_hk 5y ago
      So am I. Op seem ok.
    - justin66 5y ago
      > Not sure what's wrong with OPs account. Pretty much everything. The OP made a number of statements about the various platforms' marketshare over time which were inaccurate if applied globally, but might have been accurate in a certain country, hence my question to them. All of this in service of an idea - that x86 hasn't been dominant for four decades - which is so absurdly counterfactual that it's silly to argue about. I mean, you guys know that these sales figures are public, right? Regarding the assertion that PCs were ever "quite rare in private usages." There are some pretty good charts of the various home computers' marketshare available here: https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/4/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/4/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/5/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/5/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/6/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/6/ It occurs to me after sharing those that one could look at those charts and assume all those IBM PCs were going to businesses (that's an AWFUL LOT of businesses!) but I don't have all day to spend on gathering this data... research game sales in the mid eighties if you have doubts about this! They were servicing a dying C64 and Apple II market, and a rapidly growing x86 market. x86 did not wait for nineties (how is this even an argument... jeez). I still have the Athlon XP 3200+ system I built, but AMD didn't deal any kind of "killing blow" with anything. That's extremely silly. AMD did an admirable job of forcing 64-bit adoption on the PC a bit sooner than Intel would have liked (and driving multicore!), but x86's domination in the marketplace did not have to wait for that. In terms of marketshare, ARM didn't matter much until it became an embedded standard. Regarding 68k, which the OP brought up for some reason, I offer this: https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/7/ https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/7/

raverbashing 5y ago

> with all its amazing architectures. SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. But some things like SPARC were just headache-inducing https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-window/ https://atiqcs.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/sparc-register-windo...

tyingq 5y ago
It was pretty amazing to enjoy 64 bit computing and before Intel had it. They were more popular in some niches, for a time, than anything else.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Yes Intel's attitude is too much based on marketing sometimes. "Consumers don't need 64-bit" (and trying to promote Itanium) "Consumers don't need ECC RAM" It holds back the industry now that they are the only PC platform. PS: I think Itanium was a really good idea but again marketing made it unviable. They wanted to position it purely for servers, just at a time where there was a real cost focus on servers using commodity hardware (e.g. from Google)
lmm 5y ago
> And here's the thing, mostly they weren't amazing. They were just expensive and not popular. I agree with this part, but the sparc register windows are completely reasonable and obvious.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  It might be reasonable, but it's a chore, especially on linux to work with it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23709902
  - mst 5y ago
    "Avoiding needing to spill registers to the stack" is a focus of much optimisation work in lots of places - and, yeah, it's absolutely work but the performance gains can still be worth it. Plus I'd argue that SPARC is enough simpler to work with than x86 in other ways that you could look at it as "spending your complexity budget somewhere else" more than it being more headache inducing. (though admittedly I cut my teeth on assembly on an ARM2 so basically every modern architecture is kinda headache inducingly complicated to me ;)