4 ms·

Apple is not going back to x86; and server side computing is also moving away from x86 - either to ARM or specialised AI hardware.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
So far, I have been able to pull out a lot more perf/$ from Intel CPUs on AWS than from ARM. I know the ARM cores benchmark well for certain applications, but at the moment, the Intel SIMD instructions are a little too powerful, so if you can take advantage of them, you will win on x86.
aNoob7000 4y ago
I agree that Intel is in trouble on many front, but I don't see the x86 instruction set going away anytime soon. The desktop and server world is basically running on x86 at this time.
- dboreham 4y ago
  There are big cracks appearing though in this edifice. Thanks to ARM Macbook, it's now expected that projects ship ARM packages, ARM containers etc. And therefor it's practical to deploy on ARM servers. Raspberry Pi also helped with this historically. Even Windows -- I use a Surface Pro X which provides a wonderful travel experience.
foobiekr 4y ago
It isn't like Apple hasn't jumped ship before. It remains to be seen if Apple can stay on top of the performance curve. Right now they are doing it, primarily, through capital intensive means. They have the best fab process, bought with capital investment and order guarantees, and some of the best ASIC and CPU arch heads in the world, bought with comp packages. It's like like there's some law of nature that means Apple will always be on top. We'll see what Intel does - they might go down the RISCV path for all we know, wherein their own talent richness may well put them at an advantage.
- sliken 4y ago
  Sure. But keep in mind that say Apple's future arm designs fail to be market leading, without much pain they could switch to any number of other arm cores. Similarly is TSMC falls behind there's other fabs out there, like Samsung, or even Intel.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

So far, I have been able to pull out a lot more perf/$ from Intel CPUs on AWS than from ARM. I know the ARM cores benchmark well for certain applications, but at the moment, the Intel SIMD instructions are a little too powerful, so if you can take advantage of them, you will win on x86.

aNoob7000 4y ago

I agree that Intel is in trouble on many front, but I don't see the x86 instruction set going away anytime soon. The desktop and server world is basically running on x86 at this time.

dboreham 4y ago
There are big cracks appearing though in this edifice. Thanks to ARM Macbook, it's now expected that projects ship ARM packages, ARM containers etc. And therefor it's practical to deploy on ARM servers. Raspberry Pi also helped with this historically. Even Windows -- I use a Surface Pro X which provides a wonderful travel experience.

foobiekr 4y ago

It isn't like Apple hasn't jumped ship before. It remains to be seen if Apple can stay on top of the performance curve. Right now they are doing it, primarily, through capital intensive means. They have the best fab process, bought with capital investment and order guarantees, and some of the best ASIC and CPU arch heads in the world, bought with comp packages. It's like like there's some law of nature that means Apple will always be on top. We'll see what Intel does - they might go down the RISCV path for all we know, wherein their own talent richness may well put them at an advantage.

sliken 4y ago
Sure. But keep in mind that say Apple's future arm designs fail to be market leading, without much pain they could switch to any number of other arm cores. Similarly is TSMC falls behind there's other fabs out there, like Samsung, or even Intel.