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Never Bet Against x86

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Re: Never Bet Against x86

#71

Post by kode-targz »

fragmede wrote: post #58
adrian_b wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RISC-V has a beautiful license, but it is one of the ugliest and least efficient computer ISAs ever designed. Any competent computer engineer can design a much better ISA than RISC-V. The problem is that designing a CPU ISA is easy and it can be done in a few weeks at most. On the other hand, writing all the software tools that you need to be able to use an ISA, e.g. assemblers, linkers, debuggers, profilers, compile…

What does that mean in a world where writing software just got a few orders of magnitude cheaper? An Andrew Huang could create a new ISA replete with everything and get it done.

It didn't though. Not good software at least. AI (which is what I'm guessing you're referring to here) is simply incapable of writing such mission -critical low-level code, especially for a niche and/or brand new ISA. It simply can't. It has nothing to plagiarize from, contrary to the billions of lines of JavaScript and python it has access to. This kind of work can most definitely be AI-assisted, but my estimate is that the time gained would be minimal. An LLM is able to write some functional arduino code, maybe even some semi-functional bare-metal esp32 code, but nothing deeper than that.

Re: Never Bet Against x86

#73

Post by rep_lodsb »

anthk wrote: post #56
M95D wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ that! You can't run a COM program today. Not without emulation. Recent PCs can't even run DOS EXE because they're missing the BIOS interrupts most DOS programs use.

No, you are wrong. DOS COM files if 16 bit can't be run on 64 bit CPU's but 32 bit DOS binaries can be run under 32 bit GNU/Linux installs with DosEMU straight by just emulating the BIOS part, the rest is native.

It has nothing to do with being unable to run 16-bit code, that's a myth.

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/modify_ldt.2.html

Set seg_32bit=0 and you can create 16-bit code and data segments. Still works on 64 bit. What's missing is V86 mode, which emulates the real mode segmentation model.

Re: Never Bet Against x86

#74

Post by anthk »

M95D wrote: post #66
anthk wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you are wrong. DOS COM files if 16 bit can't be run on 64 bit CPU's but 32 bit DOS binaries can be run under 32 bit GNU/Linux installs with DosEMU straight by just emulating the BIOS part, the rest is native.

You actually confirmed what I said. :)

50/50, because once you boot a 32 bit os you can run 16 bit binaries :)

I'm pretty sure that if I make a dual-kernel 9front (9pc and 9pc64 available at boot) in a 64 bit machine and I compile emu2 for it, DOS COM binaries might be trapped enough to run simple text mode tools under the 386 port.

Re: Never Bet Against x86

#75

Post by rep_lodsb »

M95D wrote: post #49
mifydev wrote: post #22

I'm quite concerned about x86 future, but the article has a point if you read it past the title. It says that x86 is highly standardised - even with different combinations of chips, peripherals and motherboards you know it will work just fine. It's not the case for ARM systems - can you even have something similar to IBM PC with ARM? I personally know that adding support for ARM devices on Linux is a huge and manual…

> my worry is that ARM devices will bring an end to such an open platform like modern PCs are. Modern PCs are NOT open platform anymore. Not since signed bootloaders, UEFI, secure boot. ARM on the other hand, as long as they don't require signed bootloaders (like phones) or a closed source driver for GPU or something, are in fact open.

Secure boot can be disabled even on modern PCs.

Re: Never Bet Against x86

#76

Post by beagle3 »

wolrah wrote: post #59
beagle3 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they did not win was the popularity contest, mostly thanks to Windows - the Wintel market was just too massive to compete with. But that’s changed somewhat - Apple has managed a larger mind and market share (while switching into ARM). The vast majority of uses are now available on the web, which is CPU agnostic, and there is a huge amount of open source software available. The only things for which x86 still shi…

> The only things for which x86 still shines a little brighter are games, and native office. But office is mostly available on web, on Mac, and on Winarm. So games. Which aren’t big enough market mass to sustain the x86’s popularity — and is a segment (soon) under attack by Valve. You've missed a huge segment: Random in-house apps or niche vertical market apps that are closely tethered with a business workflow to the…

No I did not miss it. That has moved to web, either directly Or through an RDP/VNC interface where the actual windows virtual machine is hidden.

Embedded/hardware is the last segment still not replaced by web.

Re: Never Bet Against x86

#77

Post by beagle3 »

pjmlp wrote: post #63
beagle3 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What they did not win was the popularity contest, mostly thanks to Windows - the Wintel market was just too massive to compete with. But that’s changed somewhat - Apple has managed a larger mind and market share (while switching into ARM). The vast majority of uses are now available on the web, which is CPU agnostic, and there is a huge amount of open source software available. The only things for which x86 still shi…

Most people outside US, and similar G8 countries, aren't going to pay Apple.

No, but Microsoft are also going arm. Where the us goes, the world goes eventually.

Re: Never Bet Against x86

#78

Post by cmrdporcupine »

M95D wrote: post #50
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really when people say x86 now tho they don't mean that. They really mean the variant introduced with the 386 which has a linear memory model, memory protection, etc. Or x86_64 which is philosophically akin to the 386 but really a new ISA. So it's really more like mid-80s or early 2000s, not late 70s.

^ that! You can't run a COM program today. Not without emulation. Recent PCs can't even run DOS EXE because they're missing the BIOS interrupts most DOS programs use.

Even if you could/can it is an anachronism. Architecturally there's just a huge difference between 8086 and even 80286 and the 386. Before the 386 I wouldn't touch a machine with an Intel processor in it. Once the 386/486 penetrated the market and became cheap it was game over for everything else because it was good enough (linear address space, memory protection, larger address space, 32-bit etc etc), smart enough, gosh darn it it was cheap and everywhere.

Re: Never Bet Against x86

#79

Post by TomatoCo »

jsheard wrote: post #12
samuelknight wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Valve ship without x86?

Nothing yet, but the upcoming Steam Frame VR headset is ARM based. The relevant detail is they're bankrolling the open source FEX x86 emulator, with the goal of bringing the whole Steam back-catalogue to ARM systems.

Now that Google and Apple have to (more-or-less) allow other app stores, I wonder if Valve is bankrolling FEX with the intent of selling games on mobile?

Re: Never Bet Against x86

#80

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #5
trvz wrote: post #2

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'd add AWS + Gravitron to that list as well.

Yeah, we migrated a bunch of compute to Graviton a few years ago at a previous employer and the result was better performance at a lower price point.
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