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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

#91

Post by snvzz »

Remnant44 wrote: post #37

This is hopeful. Whatever the ARM enthusiasts would like, x86 is going to stick around for a long time, and working together to evolve the ISA extensions in a more cohesive manner would go a long way. In particular, I'd really like AMD and Intel to get on the same page in terms of avx10 / avx512 support. Many people correctly note that avx512 support is not super relevant today, but this can be laid heavily at the fe…

>x86 is going to stick around for a long time

It won't. Due to its licensing, x86 does not stand a chance against RISC-V.

Especially not after Apple, Microsoft and others (e.g. Box64) have demonstrated ability to run x86 code elsewhere reasonably well, thus providing a clear migration path.

These actions by AMD and Intel are seen as a desperate attempt to keep x86-64 relevant. As non-x86 hardware increasingly shows up and runs legacy code with little issue, x86 is doomed.

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

#92

Post by snvzz »

tliltocatl wrote: post #65

Everyone is commenting on "let x86 die" and I would agree if it was just about ISA. But the problem is that x86 has some-sorta-total-disaster-of-a-standard for peripherals and configuration (ACPI, UEFI and so on) and you can actually buy a computer that is compliant and will run Linux out of the box, even if with some glitches. ARM is a handful of totally incompatible SoCs and you are totally dependent on SoC integra…

>you can actually buy a computer that is compliant and will run Linux out of the box, even if with some glitches.

Note that neither RISC-V nor aarch64 are any worse in that regard.

If anything, they're doing much better platform standardization wise.

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

#93

Post by EasyMark »

tliltocatl wrote: post #65

Everyone is commenting on "let x86 die" and I would agree if it was just about ISA. But the problem is that x86 has some-sorta-total-disaster-of-a-standard for peripherals and configuration (ACPI, UEFI and so on) and you can actually buy a computer that is compliant and will run Linux out of the box, even if with some glitches. ARM is a handful of totally incompatible SoCs and you are totally dependent on SoC integra…

As a user, I don’t care about x86 bloat or “baggage”, all I care about is how fast is it relative to its competitors and how stable is it for what I need it for. A lot of hardware people will be angry with that but I say let the market decide; if RISC V or ARM supplant it, great!

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

#94

Post by School-Cotton »

akira2501 wrote: post #27
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.

No one "needs" a particular architecture. It's just that some of them are better suited to certain problems than others. If you really want to get rid of something and "move on" why not get rid of the wild class of devastating speculation bugs that every OOO processor in existence currently has? Far more valuable than worrying about how instruction bits are arranged in a stream.

If anyone knew how to get rid of all the speculation bugs, don’t you think they’d do so? What concretely are you proposing Intel and AMD do?

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

#95

Post by snvzz »

janice1999 wrote: post #88
afr0ck wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you wrote doesn't make any sense. Arm has DTB [1]. Most SoCs re-use a lot of hardware IP blocks and they require very little modifications to DTB files in the kernel and device drivers to get them working. PCIe and USB support discoverability so no issue from that side. Arm ecosystem is cleaner in my experience and learned from the mistakes of the past. Arm CPUs are still not as fast as high-end x86 chips, but i…

x86 has a a mature open source driver system especially for graphics. Although there are great reverse engineering efforts (Collobra and others), with ARM SOCs you can find yourself dependent on blobs for graphics and locked into ancient and insecure Android and Linux images.

Yet people are running games[0] on their MILK-V Jupiter boards, using the same discrete GPUs that you would on an x86 system.

Meantime, companies such as PowerVR or ARM are funding their own open source mesa3d drivers.

0. https://box86.org/blog/

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

#96

Post by School-Cotton »

immibis wrote: post #70
CamperBob2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not get rid of the wild class of devastating speculation bugs that every OOO processor in existence currently has? Because almost no one but cloud-computing providers have a threat model that justifies the performance hit (and, not coincidentally, the carbon footprint) associated with crippled CPUs.

Laptops could do with the power use reduction.

I think you are underestimating how many times slower processors would be without any speculation at all. It would mean having to wait dozens of cycles on every branch so you can know whether it was taken before executing the next instruction, for example.

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

#97

Post by snvzz »

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)

To RISC-V, due to its licensing.

ARM is yet another dead end.

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

#98

Post by bcrl »

The prior rumours that Jim Keller had AMD develop the K10 core with the option of using an ARM front end would have created an extremely interesting way to compare the merits of the 2 instruction sets. x86 has constraints that make it far more programmer friendly than ARM (weak memory ordering models make my brain hurt!), yet performance has been pushed ahead through techniques that were only dreamed of decades ago. I really wonder what Intel and AMD could come up with using the ARM64 instruction set combined with the knowledge gained from decades of pushing x86 and x86-64 to the limit.

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

#100

Post by monocasa »

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…

Those patents are starting to expire. Original x86-64 is probably free and clear now, being released in 2001. The big sticking point for general code out there (cmpxchg16b) was released in 2008, so it only has a few more years left.

If anything this x86 "reshaping" sounds like a way to get some new patent bricks for the wall of the garden.

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