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What happens to the computer and tech industry if Intel fails? The x86 licence still has value to some others in the space, but it seems like Intel could poten

What happens to the computer and tech industry if Intel fails? The x86 licence still has value to some others in the space, but it seems like Intel could potentially be sold off for parts if it can't sell correct.

_w1tm 2y ago
ARM wins the instruction set wars and buys the tech. Future ARM processors will have x86 hardware that offers compatibility with legacy software. Eventually the instruction set is forgotten.
- kbolino 2y ago
  Why/how would the death of Intel kill off AMD too?
  - _w1tm 2y ago
    IBM still sells CPUs based on the PowerPC (now Power ISA) architecture. AMD doesn’t need to die for x86 to become irrelevant.
    - kbolino 2y ago
      But Intel does? Or are you saying x86 becomes irrelevant no matter what?
      - _w1tm 2y ago
        The latter. I don’t think Intel will survive their spiral without government intervention, the organization is too married to x86. They might transform into something else and keep the name, the same way Nokia stopped being Nokia.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  Got me thinking, from what I've read, modern high-performance cores do a lot of similar tricks and translate everything to uops anyway. How hard would it be for say AMD to make a performant dual-ISA CPU? I was thinking somewhat like how virtual 8086 mode[1] worked on 32bit CPUs, ie OS could be ARM-based, but it could run x86 processes. I assume it would be hard to not sacrifice performance for one of the ISAs, but if it's for legacy applications you wouldn't need top speed necessarily. Are ARM and x86 just too different to make it work? Are there other obstacles? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode
  - astrange 2y ago
    > Got me thinking, from what I've read, modern high-performance cores do a lot of similar tricks and translate everything to uops anyway. It's not really true. The uops are highly related to the input instructions. There's enough room in a big desktop CPU to fit a big complex decoder yes, but it's a waste of space you could be using for other things, namely even more caches. But the main reason not to do it is that you can do emulation or recompilation in software instead.
blasphemers 2y ago
Not sure how much x86 is actually worth considering x86-64 is owned by AMD
fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
As another commenter pointed out, AMD owns the x86_64 patents. The original x86 patents have long since expired already, and the x64 patents should be expiring soon as well. The ones listed on Wikipedia have already expired[0] but it is not clear how many extensions are needed to run most modern x64 binaries and if they can be easily emulated via another extension or through microcode. (if that is even allowed). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Licensing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Licensing (From the above link, US6889312B1 actually had its patents mistakenly transferred to Philips which seemingly went unnoticed for 18 years)

_w1tm 2y ago

ARM wins the instruction set wars and buys the tech. Future ARM processors will have x86 hardware that offers compatibility with legacy software. Eventually the instruction set is forgotten.

kbolino 2y ago
Why/how would the death of Intel kill off AMD too?
- _w1tm 2y ago
  IBM still sells CPUs based on the PowerPC (now Power ISA) architecture. AMD doesn’t need to die for x86 to become irrelevant.
  - kbolino 2y ago
    But Intel does? Or are you saying x86 becomes irrelevant no matter what?
    - _w1tm 2y ago
      The latter. I don’t think Intel will survive their spiral without government intervention, the organization is too married to x86. They might transform into something else and keep the name, the same way Nokia stopped being Nokia.
magicalhippo 2y ago
Got me thinking, from what I've read, modern high-performance cores do a lot of similar tricks and translate everything to uops anyway. How hard would it be for say AMD to make a performant dual-ISA CPU? I was thinking somewhat like how virtual 8086 mode[1] worked on 32bit CPUs, ie OS could be ARM-based, but it could run x86 processes. I assume it would be hard to not sacrifice performance for one of the ISAs, but if it's for legacy applications you wouldn't need top speed necessarily. Are ARM and x86 just too different to make it work? Are there other obstacles? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_8086_mode
- astrange 2y ago
  > Got me thinking, from what I've read, modern high-performance cores do a lot of similar tricks and translate everything to uops anyway. It's not really true. The uops are highly related to the input instructions. There's enough room in a big desktop CPU to fit a big complex decoder yes, but it's a waste of space you could be using for other things, namely even more caches. But the main reason not to do it is that you can do emulation or recompilation in software instead.

blasphemers 2y ago

Not sure how much x86 is actually worth considering x86-64 is owned by AMD

fngjdflmdflg 2y ago

As another commenter pointed out, AMD owns the x86_64 patents. The original x86 patents have long since expired already, and the x64 patents should be expiring soon as well. The ones listed on Wikipedia have already expired[0] but it is not clear how many extensions are needed to run most modern x64 binaries and if they can be easily emulated via another extension or through microcode. (if that is even allowed). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Licensing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Licensing (From the above link, US6889312B1 actually had its patents mistakenly transferred to Philips which seemingly went unnoticed for 18 years)