Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

x86 is dead, long live x86

engineering.mercari.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 172 posts

Re: x86 is dead, long live x86

#31

Post by o1y32 »

retskrad wrote: post #4

x86 lives on desktop now. Windows, Intel, AMD and Nvidia have more or less thrown in the white flag and given the laptop market to Apple.

A few programmers on HN think only they use laptops (and specifically Macbooks). Not surprising.

If you just bother to open your eyes just a little bit wider you would notice that there is a huge market for Chromebooks, budget laptops, gaming laptops, mobile workstations, ultrabooks for students, gamers, business people, bankers etc. New things are happening every month. We are seeing more efficient laptops from Intel and AMD. Companies like Framework are doing actual innovations in the decade old laptop area. And there are workflows that can only be done on Windows.

Your claim is completely unfounded.

Re: x86 is dead, long live x86

#32

Post by slfnflctd »

When I think about how long chips like the 6502 have still been in active use (almost 50 years now), it is hard to conceive of a world where there isn't a significant presence of x86 activity for the rest of my life.

The majority of 'the market' may go elsewhere, but for a gazillion reasons, x86 will not be disappearing for quite a while. At this point it would honestly surprise me if we didn't at least have high quality emulation available until the end of the human race as we know it.

Sure, we've probably lost most of the software ever written on it, but a whole lot of interesting artifacts from a key transition point for our species still remain locked up in this architecture.

Re: x86 is dead, long live x86

#33

Post by debugnik »

scarface_74 wrote: post #12
jimmaswell wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what? I would never buy an Apple laptop and no one I know has one either. The Windows "gaming laptop" I got a few years ago for game dev is perfectly adequate and has features missing from Macbooks: - ethernet port - hdmi port - multiple usb A and C ports - solid keyboard Same for my work laptop, again Windows/x86 and no one I know with a work laptop is supplied a Mac either.

> Based on what? I would never buy an Apple laptop and no one I know has one either Yes because no one that you know buys an Apple laptop that must mean that Apple isn’t selling any… > Same for my work laptop, again Windows/x86 and no one I know with a work laptop is supplied a Mac either. I find the lack of self awareness…amusing. Because no one you know uses a Mac laptop, that must mean no one uses one. Well my ane…

They're not arguing that Apple doesn't sell laptops, they're refuting that "Windows, Intel, AMD and Nvidia have [...] given the laptop market to Apple". Unless one thinks the laptop market only exists in the US, this idea simply can't match reality, not yet anyway.

Re: x86 is dead, long live x86

#34

Post by nazgulsenpai »

Andrex wrote: post #21
kens wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ARM has a lot more market share in people's minds than in actual numbers. One research firm says that ARM has 15% of the laptop market share in 2023, expected to increase to 25% by 2027. (Surprisingly, Apple only has 90% of the ARM laptop market.) In the server market, just an estimated 8% of CPU shipments in 2023 were ARM. https://www.counterpointresearch.com/arm-based-pcs-to-nearly... https://www.digitimes.com/news…

I keep meaning to research this, and maybe this isn't the right place, but how are things going for Linux executables? Last I tried Linux on ARM it seemed like application-level support for ARM was very spotty. It doesn't seem like a Rosetta 2-like effort is making it into mainline Linux anytime soon, if ever.

I suppose it depends on the distribution but most I've used (Manjaro, Void, Alpine) are close to 1:1 with x86. Of course third party applications have to compile for ARM if they don't intend to distribute source code.

Re: x86 is dead, long live x86

#35

Post by havblue »

arp242 wrote: post #19
scarface_74 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Based on what? I would never buy an Apple laptop and no one I know has one either Yes because no one that you know buys an Apple laptop that must mean that Apple isn’t selling any… > Same for my work laptop, again Windows/x86 and no one I know with a work laptop is supplied a Mac either. I find the lack of self awareness…amusing. Because no one you know uses a Mac laptop, that must mean no one uses one. Well my ane…

"Apple isn't selling any laptops" wasn't what was said. The original claim was x86 has "thrown in the white flag" and that Apple dominates the laptop market, which is a pretty ridiculous claim since x86 is still the vast majority of laptop sales and Windows is still the dominant laptop OS.

I don't personally see MacBooks as a viable platform either right now, but I would say that this looks like a steady decline for windows x86 laptops until Chrome laptops take over or an arm-based windows replacement takes hold. "Hey this isn't a surrender, it's a war of attrition for the next five years!!!"

Re: x86 is dead, long live x86

#36

Post by riffic »

slfnflctd wrote: post #32

When I think about how long chips like the 6502 have still been in active use (almost 50 years now), it is hard to conceive of a world where there isn't a significant presence of x86 activity for the rest of my life. The majority of 'the market' may go elsewhere, but for a gazillion reasons, x86 will not be disappearing for quite a while. At this point it would honestly surprise me if we didn't at least have high qua…

A thing's future longevity can sometimes be predicted by how long it's already been around.

Re: x86 is dead, long live x86

#37

Post by harpratap »

netr0ute wrote: post #24

Why do these kinds of articles essentially refuse to admit RISC-V exists?

Cloud world is really slow. Imagine writing about Zen3 Milan in Aug 2023 when AMD has already announced Zen4c Bergamo. Actually we were "ahead of the curve" since we got access to T2D before it was made publicly available in Tokyo region, and even then it took several months to get enough capacity in Tokyo to fully migrate our production Kubernetes cluster.

I really wish we could test out RISC-V SoCs from the likes of tenstorrent, but it's a long journey

Re: x86 is dead, long live x86

#38

Post by arp242 »

havblue wrote: post #35
arp242 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Apple isn't selling any laptops" wasn't what was said. The original claim was x86 has "thrown in the white flag" and that Apple dominates the laptop market, which is a pretty ridiculous claim since x86 is still the vast majority of laptop sales and Windows is still the dominant laptop OS.

I don't personally see MacBooks as a viable platform either right now, but I would say that this looks like a steady decline for windows x86 laptops until Chrome laptops take over or an arm-based windows replacement takes hold. "Hey this isn't a surrender, it's a war of attrition for the next five years!!!"

Given that 15-20 years ago almost all laptops were x86/Windows, "decline" is pretty much the only direction the platform could go in.

I don't expect either x86 or Windows to go away any time soon – in general I think x86 has been somewhat unfairly maligned, and for most applications (including laptops) it works pretty well and is even the best available choice. I would prefer to say "diversification" or "the existence of actual competition" rather than "decline", as that doesn't imply it's going away.

Re: x86 is dead, long live x86

#39

Post by distcs »

mobilio wrote: post #3

I've recently switch from VPS with Intel to physical server with latest AMD Zen4. Single thread performance blow my mind with scores like 4000. Without change a single line of code = performance was 10x than before.

> Single thread performance blow my mind with scores like 4000.

What exactly is this number 4000? What does it mean? Where can I read more about this scoring system?

Re: x86 is dead, long live x86

#40

Post by agloe_dreams »

cardanome wrote: post #23
retskrad wrote: post #4

x86 lives on desktop now. Windows, Intel, AMD and Nvidia have more or less thrown in the white flag and given the laptop market to Apple.

Apple products are only dominant the US. For the rest of the world they are more of an luxury item. That said, I am not terribly interested in ARM-based laptops for now. Yes, they may be more energy efficient and all but that hardly matters to me compared to just having the same x86 architecture I run on my desktop and servers. That sweet binary-compatibility means less headache. People underestimate the advantages t…

A key element to Apple and ARM and why you are right outside the us is this:

1. Apple's chips are so far beyond everything else that it makes obvious sense for Apple only. Snapdragon is at least 30% slower single core while having worse Performance per watt.

2. Apple wasn't playing fair with their translation layer. The Rosetta layer cheats a little because apple also made the chip. The secret sauce is that the M1 has a hardware compatibility mode (That technically breaks ARM spec) for x86 memory order that basically gives near 1:1 performance.

3. Microsoft heavily botched their ARM rollout (again. Hello, Windows RT). The translation layer on W10/11 is just bad, not because of bad coding but just the technical limits of what they were trying to do.

4. Google is in a great place with ARM compatibility in Chrome OS as the only consumer-facing apps are either built-in or on the play store...which was designed for ARM in the first place. Problem is that nobody will give them a good chip for ChromeOS and the focus is on low end, so Mediatek is just cruising.

ARM is a great arch...but right now it is Apple VS x86, not ARM.

Post reply on HN