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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

#21

Post by ArchOversight »

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…

Docker on Mac is running a VM in a hypervisor to run Linux.

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

#23

Post by rubyn00bie »

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.

I think it’s more on NVidia, Qualcomm, or AMD to engineer their own ARM based chips which can outcompete x86 variants. Both NVidia and AMD are rumored to be working on general purpose ARM based CPUs. Right now NVidia is likely the one to do it thanks to their absolutely obscene margins giving them more than enough money for R&D.

I personally don’t think there is a lot of incentive for ARM to make the fastest possible cores. They’d be undermining those who are currently paying the most to license their IP. ARM’s real incentive is power efficiency and then letting the licensees use and abuse that for performance gains.

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

#24

Post by sqeaky »

ArchOversight wrote: post #20
Almondsetat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

He didn't say it implemented any instructions, I would argue that the memory ordering is quite important and part of why other CPU architectures can sometimes be faster or more efficient than x86, it takes effort to guarantee atomicity and apparent read and write ordering. And when a CPU was expending effort that means either transistors or time.

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

#25

Post by tester756 »

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 wish we could just get away from x86 "standard" and move on.

But actually why? is there reason that isn't licensing?

Because perf or perf/watt is not the reason

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

#26

Post by Pet_Ant »

autoexecbat wrote: post #22

Give us some riscv instruction decoders on the x86 cpus, let us pick per-process what ISA we use

Why would Intel and AMD put a hole in the wall that guards their duopoly? Justifiably it wouldn't be a sales booster in the short term and in the long term it's a threat.

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

#27

Post by akira2501 »

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.

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

#28

Post by pantulis »

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…

> I don't know where this incredible x86 emulation people are talking about on Mac is hiding.

It's in Rosetta, running x86 binaries compiled for older macOS versions.

The state of Docker in macOS has never been good, with Orbdev being the best Docker compatible container engine for desktop Macs.

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

#29

Post by Findecanor »

ArchOversight wrote: post #20
Almondsetat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Apple also implements a couple x86 CPU status register flags not present in AArch64.

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

#30

Post by zamadatix »

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.

The main problem with non-speculative options isn't hardware it's performance. You can turn x86 CPUs into in order machines without respinning hardware. Nobody wants to do it because it's slow as molasses. If there was a completely alternative design that was better than speculative execution wholesale then it'd be back to being the original "just go to the fastest thing".
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