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x86 Evolution Still Driving the Revolution

Posted by kdawson on from the what's-a-few-nanometers-among-friends dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The x86 instruction set may be ancient, in technology terms, but that doesn't mean it's not exciting or innovative. In fact the future of x86 is looking brighter than it has in years. Geek.com has an article pointing out how at 30 years old x86 is still a moving force in technological advancement and, despite calls for change and numerous alternatives, it will still be the technology that gets us where we want to go. Quoting: 'As far as the world of the x86 goes, the future is very bright. There are so many new markets that 45nm products enable. Intel has really nailed the future with this goal. And in the future when they produce 32nm, and underclock their existing processors to allow the extremely low power requirements of cell phones and other items, then the x86 will be the power-house for our home computers, our notebooks, our cell phones, our MIDs and other unrealized devices today.'"

5 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Sure, but... by MostAwesomeDude · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Although it's true that we have been forced to use x86 for quite a while, and as a result have gotten quite good at using it, that doesn't mean that it is an optimal instruction set. amd64 is an ugly hack, as is PAE, and although they do work, they don't change the fact that x86 was never intended to handle 64-bit spaces.

    Consider the various POWER arches, and the ridiculously powerful ARM arch. ARM, for example, has an SIMD extension called Neon, which makes audio decoding possible at something like 15 MHz. These are very cool and potentially powerful architectures that have never been fully explored due to Microsoft's monopoly in the nineties.

    (To be fair, Microsoft couldn't have forced adoption of another arch even if they wanted to; they homogenized the market way too far.)

    --
    ~ C.
    1. Re:Sure, but... by LizardKing · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Speed comes much further down the list of priorities in most embedded applications. Size, power consumption, heat dissipation and even code size matter more - and code size is related to instruction set. Even when it comes to performance, x86 is relatively inferior compared to something like an ARM processor - it's mostly the higher clock speed and Intel's ability to build new fabs faster than anyone else that's kept them in the game.

    2. Re:Sure, but... by the_humeister · · Score: 4, Insightful

      These are very cool and potentially powerful architectures that have never been fully explored due to Microsoft's monopoly in the nineties.
      How exactly is an ISA monoculture Microsoft's fault? Microsoft did make Windows for multiple CPU architectures. Guess which ones people bought? The x86 version because the hardware is a lot less expensive. If there's any entity to blame, it's IBM, HP, DEC, Sun etc for not bringing down the prices of their architectures.
    3. Re:Sure, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Microsoft didn't homogenize anything; it was the hardware manufacturers who did. MS wrote DOS for the IBM PC and when other people copied the PC, they licensed DOS for it. MS wrote software for other personal computers (Apple being the best example), but it was the PC clones that took over the marketplace. Indeed, you could argue that if the market did not become homogenized, home computers would not be the ubiquitous devices they are today. Computers would instead be cheap toys for hobbyists or expensive tools for scientists and engineers.

      Keep in mind that MS has had Windows available for i860 (codenamed N-Ten, the source of the NT moniker), MIPS, x86, Alpha, PPC, IA64, and x86-64. Also, Windows did not become popular until version 3.0, OS/2 never really took off, and Windows NT didn't become pervasive until XP. When you look at things this way, it is pretty clear that MS has almost no control over the market.

      dom

  2. Re:Mobile phones + x86 ... again! by ajlitt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Right on. Besides, the mobile market is fueled by the further integration of peripherals into SOCs. Performance and power aside: if I were going to design a smartphone, I wouldn't want to go with a three-piece cpu and chipset, not to mention licensing and development for BIOS on a new platform. And that's before including special ASICs for functionality not built into the chipset (3D accel, radio interfaces, LCD & touch panel). And then I'd be stuck with one of the few vendors who make modern embedded x86 chips.

    If I go with ARM instead, I get a wide choice of SOCs from which I can pick and choose the built-in features (including the ones mentioned above). Bootloaders are generally included as part of the BSP for any given embedded OS, and if I don't like that there's always redboot or uboot (probably more too, I haven't been in the embedded world in a few years). If I don't want to use vendor A's product on revision 2 of the product, then I choose from one of the many remaining products out there, and my code ports over cleanly.