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Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

theregister.com

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Re: Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

#11

Post by simcop2387 »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #4
rdudek wrote: post #3

I wish we could just get away from x86 "standard" and move on. If there is something that still needs it, x86 emulation is very efficient nowadays. Just look what Apple has done with this ARM architecture. Even now, Qualcom's ARM processors running Windows are doing a fantastic job emulating x86 as needed.

They want to keep x86 going because they have cross-licensed patents which keep their market share a walled-garden. Anything else would invite competition. Mind you, it's not just them. MIPS was pretty shady with their patent that even if trapped and implemented in software they sued so you could not compete without licensing and losing your margen. SPARC was open... until UltraSPARC IIRC and then they tried somethin…

> That is what is so important about it RISC-V is that it being an open ISA creates a commodity with true competition instead of competing oligopolies.

Not just that, but also by being fairly vanilla/boring about a lot of things in the ISA too. Thus letting the ISA itself be less an impediment to being compatible with ARM and x86_64 as far as behavior for memory ordering and such.

Re: Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

#12

Post by saagarjha »

School-Cotton wrote: post #7
rdudek wrote: post #3

I wish we could just get away from x86 "standard" and move on. If there is something that still needs it, x86 emulation is very efficient nowadays. Just look what Apple has done with this ARM architecture. Even now, Qualcom's ARM processors running Windows are doing a fantastic job emulating x86 as needed.

IIRC Apple chips are particularly good at x86 emulation because they have a special option to run with an x86-compatible memory model which is stronger than the standard arm one. A generic arm chip is not necessarily good at x86 emulation.

It could be, if it has fast RCpc.

Re: Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

#13

Post by magic_hamster »

rdudek wrote: post #3

I wish we could just get away from x86 "standard" and move on. If there is something that still needs it, x86 emulation is very efficient nowadays. Just look what Apple has done with this ARM architecture. Even now, Qualcom's ARM processors running Windows are doing a fantastic job emulating x86 as needed.

Even if Apple supports x86 emulation, they are doing a subpar job when it comes to actually running things. I got a Mac recently and I was very surprised to see Docker running as an underprivileged second class citizen, literally breaking a lot of flags and features in tools like docker-compose. Come to think of it, it's not even limited to x86 containers (which do run with rosetta) but Docker as a whole.

So far in emulation, trying to emulate a full blown x86 Linux distro was excruciatingly slow for me, not even remotely usable.

I don't know where this incredible x86 emulation people are talking about on Mac is hiding. Maybe it's some legacy apps I never used. Everything I did try so far was simply not good enough.

Re: Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

#14

Post by saagarjha »

maximilianroos wrote: post #9
rdudek wrote: post #3

I wish we could just get away from x86 "standard" and move on. If there is something that still needs it, x86 emulation is very efficient nowadays. Just look what Apple has done with this ARM architecture. Even now, Qualcom's ARM processors running Windows are doing a fantastic job emulating x86 as needed.

Move on to what? ARM? Is ARM better in every way than x86? (genuine question)

It’s not. There are a lot of ways it’s cleaner but x86 handles some things (debugging and handling of traps, for example) better.

Re: Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

#15

Post by Almondsetat »

trynumber9 wrote: post #10
rdudek wrote: post #3

I wish we could just get away from x86 "standard" and move on. If there is something that still needs it, x86 emulation is very efficient nowadays. Just look what Apple has done with this ARM architecture. Even now, Qualcom's ARM processors running Windows are doing a fantastic job emulating x86 as needed.

Apple is the only one making ARM chips fast enough to be competitive even with emulation. Qualcomm isn't on that level - they're only on par with AMD and Intel without emulation. The market won't move from the x86 duopoly to Apple's walled garden because they have a fast chip. It's on ARM to make a licensable core that's so much faster than the x86 options that people actually move to it.

Apple's emulation literally implements some x86 in hardware, and they will likely drop that silicon when the transition end, so I won't rely on that

Re: Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

#16

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

rdudek wrote: post #3

I wish we could just get away from x86 "standard" and move on. If there is something that still needs it, x86 emulation is very efficient nowadays. Just look what Apple has done with this ARM architecture. Even now, Qualcom's ARM processors running Windows are doing a fantastic job emulating x86 as needed.

What have they done with ARM? Cut out all I/O put memory on package and pay for the latest TSMC node?

I think ARM is overhyped because people see Apple's success and just assume aarch64 > x86_64

Re: Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

#17

Post by Sakos »

rdudek wrote: post #3

I wish we could just get away from x86 "standard" and move on. If there is something that still needs it, x86 emulation is very efficient nowadays. Just look what Apple has done with this ARM architecture. Even now, Qualcom's ARM processors running Windows are doing a fantastic job emulating x86 as needed.

I simply can't comprehend why people are so all-in on ARM. Snapdragon X Elite support in the Linux kernel is still a work in progress. There's still no GPU driver. It's been months. Is this going to happen every time there's a new Snapdragon? How is this sustainable long-term? If Intel or AMD release a new CPU architecture, it's basically supported out of the box, even if it might need some bug fixing (which actually happens fairly regularly).

How does Qualcomm's commitment to Linux and an open platform actually stack up to x86? Because the biggest benefit of x86 is that it forces interoperability through heavy standardization and established culture. Every ARM manufacturer is basically doing their own thing and it requires the manufacturer to give a crap about Linux or a volunteer group months or years of effort to get things running (see Asahi).

And what happens when an ARM-based device is EoL?

Re: Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

#18

Post by spockz »

magic_hamster wrote: post #13
rdudek wrote: post #3

I wish we could just get away from x86 "standard" and move on. If there is something that still needs it, x86 emulation is very efficient nowadays. Just look what Apple has done with this ARM architecture. Even now, Qualcom's ARM processors running Windows are doing a fantastic job emulating x86 as needed.

Even if Apple supports x86 emulation, they are doing a subpar job when it comes to actually running things. I got a Mac recently and I was very surprised to see Docker running as an underprivileged second class citizen, literally breaking a lot of flags and features in tools like docker-compose. Come to think of it, it's not even limited to x86 containers (which do run with rosetta) but Docker as a whole. So far in e…

What flags are you talking about? Everything here runs just fine out of the box. Just slow for x86 images and slow compared to running docker engine or podman on Linux.

Re: Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

#19

Post by WithinReason »

rdudek wrote: post #3

I wish we could just get away from x86 "standard" and move on. If there is something that still needs it, x86 emulation is very efficient nowadays. Just look what Apple has done with this ARM architecture. Even now, Qualcom's ARM processors running Windows are doing a fantastic job emulating x86 as needed.

What's wrong with x86? According to Jim Keller the disadvantage is minor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfFuTgnvwgs&t=474s

(I wish Linus let him finish though)

Re: Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA

#20

Post by ArchOversight »

Almondsetat wrote: post #15
trynumber9 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is the only one making ARM chips fast enough to be competitive even with emulation. Qualcomm isn't on that level - they're only on par with AMD and Intel without emulation. The market won't move from the x86 duopoly to Apple's walled garden because they have a fast chip. It's on ARM to make a licensable core that's so much faster than the x86 options that people actually move to it.

Apple's emulation literally implements some x86 in hardware, and they will likely drop that silicon when the transition end, so I won't rely on that

It doesn't implement some x86 in hardware, it implements some memory ordering guarantees in hardware to match what x86 requires.

However that is a very minor implementation, there is no actual x86 in Apple's ARM.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138376212...

TSO could be implemented by other ARM processors easily as well, to provide the same memory ordering guarantees. Besides that the x86 code is translated by Rosetta to ARM instructions.

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