Never Bet Against x86

Seems like a silly thing to say right when x86 is getting pummelled to death by Apple and Valve, maybe slowly, but steadily, while the rest of the gang also watches on.

I believe it’s more from the point of view of Kernel, Compiler, and Driver developers, not from manufacturers and users. Standards, while not very flexible, are good for building ecosystems.

The future of x86 is worrying but it's nowhere dead yet. I saw the C&C article yesterday and did some research, TL;DR:

- Apple took over the single-threaded crown a while ago.

- ARM also caught up in integer workloads.

- ARM Cortex is still behind in floating-point.

- Both are behind in multithreaded performance. (mostly because there are more high-end x86 systems...)

- Both are way behind in SIMD/HPC workloads. (ARM is generally stuck on 128-wide, x86 is 256-wide on Intel and 512-wide on AMD. Intel will return to 512-wide on the consumer segment too)

- ARM generally have way bigger L1 caches, mostly due to the larger pagesize, which is a significant architectural advantage.

- ARM is reaching these feats with ~4.5Ghz clocks compared to the ~5.5Ghz clocks on x86. (very rough approximation)

Overall, troubling for x86 for the future... it's an open question whether it will go the way of IBM POWER, legacy support with strict compatibility but no new workloads at all, or if it will keep adapting and evolving for the future.

I don't think my gaming PC will ever use an ARM core. When you want true "big iron" you want x86. Intel and AMD have a duopoly on high-performance, no-TDP-spared chips, and they aren't sharing that market with anyone.

The reason ARM is making inroads in the server market is we've reached the point where cooling is a significant cost factor in server farms, so lowering TDP is starting to become a relevant factor in total cost.

This feels like a take from 10 years ago, when Intel was struggling to deliver 10nm but a lot of people assumed it would all shake out in the end. I could see a defensible case for betting on x86 then, and most of the author’s bullet points seem tailored for that era.

But now? I can’t think of a single segment where x86 is doing well. Its out of mobile entirely, it’s slowly getting squeezed out of servers as e.g. Graviton takes over, it has no presence in the AI gold rush, and in consumer desktops/laptops it’s position is precarious at best.

I’m quite bearish on x86.