Will x86 be here "forever"?

[uribag]

By forever i mean a long, long, long time...

I´m asking this because how is it possible to change a cpu architecture worlwide?
How much time would it take to software developers to change programs and how to live with two major architectures at the same time?

I dont´t know if i´m being clear. Sorry for my english.

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[ShintaiDK]

x86 is not going away anytime soon.

Its extremely hard to change architecture on a world level with software and hardware combined. You essentially need monopolies for that.

Example was Intel wanted to go IA64 and used billions on it in cooperation with HP. And AMD countered it with a napkind drawup of x64 in a lunchbreak and gave x86 another 30 years of life.

 

[USER8000]

I don't think it will last forever since the very nature of computing might change in a hundred years time.

Will X86 still be around in a decade or two,most likely(guessing).

Edit!!

However,OTH,as long as you get decent performance does it really matter what instruction set is used though??

 

[NTMBK]

Example was Intel wanted to go IA64 and used billions on it in cooperation with HP. And AMD countered it with a napkind drawup of x64 in a lunchbreak and gave x86 another 30 years of life.

Meh, IA64 had plenty of its own issues- reliance on magic compilers being the main one! (And now we see the same thing happening again, with a reliance on ever wider SIMD vectors...)

 

[ShintaiDK]

Meh, IA64 had plenty of its own issues- reliance on magic compilers being the main one! (And now we see the same thing happening again, with a reliance on ever wider SIMD vectors...)

You missed the point

The key word is compatibility.

 

[Nothingness]

The key word is compatibility.

I thought iOS and Android had demonstrated the vast majority of people don't care for x86 compatibility. Now all they need are devices compatible with the apps they bought on a store where x86 doesn't matter.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I thought iOS and Android had demonstrated the vast majority of people don't care for x86 compatibility. Now all they need are devices compatible with the apps they bought on a store where x86 doesn't matter.

And an ask around showed if people had to choose between TV, PC, Tablet and a Smartphone, they pick the PC

In Denmark for example, 70% of all adults got a smartphone, 44% a tablet and 86% a PC.

The wast majority cares very much. Tablets are simply accessories and is almost on the verge of being use and throw away mentality like smartphones. If they could last longer. I doubt they would sell more than PCs do today.

I actually doubt tablets will survieve much longer when ultrabooks gets touch functions. While smartphones slowly get bigger.

You cant even get a fraction of the things you need on Android and IOS compared to x86 OS.

 

[Tsavo]

x86 is dead! - DEC Alpha
x86 is dead! - RISC
x86 is dead! - PowerPC
x86 is dead! - MIPS
x86 is dead! - SPARC
x86 is dead! - ARM

etc

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well, some day the sun will go supernova and then collapse into a black hole..., but then again the universe could be an endless cycle that given enough random events will be reborn exactly as it is today so who knows.

 

[AnandThenMan]

x86 is dead! - ARM

etc

So far ARM is making a compelling argument. x86 won't actually die off for decades, if at all. But the market is clearly moving to an architecture that is open for all to use if they want to.

 

[ShintaiDK]

So far ARM is making a compelling argument. x86 won't actually die off for decades, if at all. But the market is clearly moving to an architecture that is open for all to use if they want to.

Sofar ARM went nowhere segment wise. And x86 went into ARMs segment.

 

[JDG1980]

I thought iOS and Android had demonstrated the vast majority of people don't care for x86 compatibility.

The reason they don't care about this compatibility on smartphones and tablets is because most of them already have a PC which they can fall back on for applications that need legacy compatibility. Very few people are getting all their work done on ARM devices. Most real-world businesses have at least some legacy applications that absolutely must run - whether they are standard x86 binaries, Office VBA automations (which don't run on RT), or weird old VBScripts or something else. This isn't going to change in the forseeable future. x86 isn't going anywhere; it will still be around 5, 10, probably 100 years from now.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Sofar ARM went nowhere segment wise. And x86 went into ARMs segment.

Then why did Intel cut earnings and sales forecasts, along with capital spending? The trend is very very clear, the market is moving away from x86.

Mobile ARM devices are selling at 2.6 times the rate of Intel-powered devices. Put another way, since the birth of Android nearly as many iOS and Android devices have been sold as PCs.

In terms of install base, a computing category that did not exist six years ago has come to overtake one that has been around for 38 years.
source

 

[Concillian]

I thought iOS and Android had demonstrated the vast majority of people don't care for x86 compatibility.

The world doesn't run on people. The world runs on equipment built for x86. I don't care what OS or software my testers run, but the drivers for some of the components only exist in the x86 space.

This is what you're going to have a hard time with. I mean it was less than 10 years ago we had equipment that used MFM hard drives. We had multimillion dollar equipment being controlled with a 1Mbps token ring network that needed a computer with an ISA slot.

It's not people you have to convert, but the installed base of depreciated equipment that makes money and there's no ROI justification to replace.

This is why much of the ARM stuff is considered toys. There isn't an infrastructure (yet) to support these devices for serious work. Yeah, I can connect to my OBDII port and monitor my car's status and check for codes... there's an app for that! But on an x86 machine I can connect to my OBDII port and reprogram my ECU through it. I can perform factory diagnostics too... there aren't apps for that in the ARM space or any space other than x86.

It's not the end users that need converted. It's the business side that holds back any kind of widespread adoption of alternates to x86. Adoption in that area will be incredibly slow.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Then why did Intel cut earnings and sales forecasts, along with capital spending? The trend is very very clear, the market is moving away from x86.

Not at all.

Essentially everyone got a PC. And PCs tends to last atleast 3 years in average
Smartphones, barely last 1½ year. And not everyone got one yet.
Tablets, dont last long eother. And not many got one yet.

Tablets are smartphones got no effect on x86 PC sales. And they will suffer the same sooner or later. The only thing that can drive both up with saturated markets is economic upturn.

 

[Bradtech519]

X86 isn't a requirement anymore for the home user base that wants to just get on the web. Smartphones/Tablets have changed the landscape for the home user base that really bought their PCs to email, and get online in the mid to late 90s, and kept buying new ones for years after. The regular user is facebook web obsessed and can use a tablet to get on facebook by taping an icon with their finger. Instead of getting on a PC which takes longer.

The business segment has PCs and Servers running custom software written for x86 and only compatible with certain operating systems. It will be a slower shift in the business segment. A lot will start going to cloud software hosted by someone else that runs on everything including all the iPads. I don't necessarily like any of this but it's what is happening. Cloud Computing and the rise of Smartphones/Tablets are the current trends and going forward. I don't think it will matter much in another 10-20 years if you are running x86 or ARM.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Tablets are smartphones got no effect on x86 PC sales.

Ridiculous statement.

 

[cytg111]

If IA64 didnt stand a chance to compete with x86 then how can ARM?
By slowly building an ecosystem on smartphones and tablets and move on up from there? That is about the only angle I can see.

And given prior discussions on the matter, x86 is not that inferior to IA64 anymore.. Sure x86 got a little overhead but negligible in the grand scheme of things.
Also it seems that when ARM shoots for x86 performance the power goes up into...x86 levels. It seems like you cant have your cake and eat it too.
- no free lunch

 

[AnandThenMan]

It's not the ISA that is the fundamental issue, although ARM is perfectly suited to thin/light devices. It's the fact that Intel is the only one that controls x86, and absolutely will not allow anyone else to use it. AMD is the exception of course (that makes x86 in any meaningful numbers), but Intel has tried to wrestle this away from AMD repeatedly.

Ultimately the market doesn't like having a gun to their collective heads, which IMO is why ARM is prospering and x86 is seeing it's influence steadily diminish. Intel is addicted to the protection afforded by a monopoly from owning the de facto ISA, ARM completely turns this upside down and prospers by licensing their ISA IP. When you combine the above with the fact that process tech is starting to coalesce, Intel's process advantage is not going to be enough to prop up x86. Heck even with that advantage, ARM currently has 95%+ of the smartphone market. A sobering thought.

 

[jpiniero]

If you define "x86" as "capable of running Windows 7", no, and I think it could be as early as after Skymont when that happens. Once AMD implodes due to the debt, Intel could very easily continue to sell Skymont to the market indefinitely as long as people need PC replacements; while focusing their efforts on this new x86-sorta architecture, solely focused on perf/watt and nothing else.

 

[Cerb]

By forever i mean a long, long, long time...

I´m asking this because how is it possible to change a cpu architecture worlwide?

$$$. JIT compilers aren't new, even for x86, and modern ones should be able to get 70%+ performance, compared to native, so long as they either do a first static pass, or cache results.

Such technology has already been used for old big server systems, and is quite reliable (IIRC, IBM and Unisys both do it--not for x86, but I'm pretty sure Unisys does it with x86 as the target).

How much time would it take to software developers to change programs and how to live with two major architectures at the same time?

We already live with many:
IA32
IA32 w/ extensions
x86-64
x86-64 w/ extensions
ARMv6 family
ARMv7 family
Power family (mostly of the PPC variety)
MIPS family

Existing binaries need x86 and Win32, along with Windows quirks. Period. That's not going away. There's no uarch shift, or anything. If x86 starts dying, software will come about to run those programs, and/or run an entire virtualized Windows OS. That's just a lot of work, compared to buying newer x86 hardware. But, that lock-in largely already has gone away, for any businesses not drinking the Kool-aid (IE, Wintel will stay on life-support for gov and big biz for many years, but is pretty much dead to consumers, startups, and nimble companies, already). It mostly affects the continued evolution of existing software running in Windows environments, if you make an exception for games (which have a pretty short life span, anyway, except for us enthusiast types).

So far ARM is making a compelling argument. x86 won't actually die off for decades, if at all. But the market is clearly moving to an architecture that is open for all to use if they want to.

The market is clearly moving away from mostly dealing with Windows, and Intel CPUs haven't been the greatest at running in low power envelopes.

The customers and vendors don't care if it's ARM or not. They care that it offers the features and performance they want for the money. Since Intel had not previously done much in terms of low-power computing, they were at a disadvantage. It's not philosophical issue. If better ARM CPUs keep coming out, ARMs it will be. Better x86, and Intel it will be. For companies needing or wanting control, ARM holds the best prospects for them, thus its popularity.

If IA64 didnt stand a chance to compete with x86 then how can ARM?

ARM is a pretty sensible RISC ISA, lacking the historical baggage of MIPS, and the weird corporate and engineering baggage of Power, and has proven itself over time. Its worst failing is that it's currently a jumble of ISAs, but ARM themselves appear to be at least trying to a little cat-herding, as far as that goes.

The thing with IA64 is that it only succeeded as well as it did because Intel withheld RAS features from x86, and HP decided that their customers were moving to Itanium. Itaniums have featured end-to-end error-checking, FI, in hardware; hardware partitioning; hot-plugging of almost everything; and much more esoteric features. In addition, the OSes that ran on it, except for Windows, had plans for future development, that they stuck to, so as a customer, you'd know what you were getting into. It never had a chance for consumers' PCs, but it did make sense for Big Iron(tm) type servers.

They've been giving the Xeon E7s more and more, lately, but several years ago, if you were in the market for Itanium, no x86 CPU was going to cut it, and it had nothing to do with CPU performance. Likewise, if you were going to do most your data protection work in software, and weren't working on older code that needed migrating. IA64 probably wouldn't have made sense, because you could do it all with COTS Xeon hardware about as well (IE, Google, Yahoo!, Skype, etc.). Of course, some businesses got stuck in the middle, since while COTS CPUs were faster, they couldn't always handle the kind of data bandwidth that Itanium or Power could (at least not without spending enough on storage and networking that you could have probably bought IA64 based servers, instead). With current Core-based Xeons, that's pretty much gone.

Anyway...ARM-derived designs are where they are today because they met vendor and user needs, not because of top-down strong-arming.

 

[shady28]

By forever i mean a long, long, long time...

I´m asking this because how is it possible to change a cpu architecture worlwide?
How much time would it take to software developers to change programs and how to live with two major architectures at the same time?

I dont´t know if i´m being clear. Sorry for my english.

Can a Moderator change the thread title (FOREVER and not FOVERER)


Title changed at user's request. By the way, I think you can do it yourself. Click on Advanced under the Edit menu.

Moderator PM

Thank you PM.

Java and .net type technology will eventually make this happen. I've seen many many corporate applications in Java moved to a different platform.

Combine that with cloud based compute, and its very feasible to move from having 500 x86 servers in a data center to a handful of big iron servers (like AIX or z/OS).

But, I think it will be a long time, definitely more than 10 years and probably more than 20.

 

[Cerb]

Java and .net type technology will eventually make this happen.

And PHP, Python, Ruby, etc., if you don't need near-native CPU performance--it's already been happening for years, already. For native performance, maturing of LLVM runtimes will likely give options other than the JVM or Mono's .NET, but if that's not your limitation, your have hardware and software options now, and really have had for 5-10 years.

It's mainly the entrenched companies with existing software and users of that software, that are having a hard time of it, because they either didn't think about it when they started, or their software is old enough that they didn't have such options, when they started (image: it's 2000 A.D. FreeBSD has so-so performance, Linux is good, but not proven enough for you, Windows is getting real servers out, Xeons are brand new, and hardly any programming tech we take for granted today has proven itself enough for someone with deep pockets). So, they have a lot of work to make changes to what their software runs on.

But, doing it will simply not ever go the direction of fewer big iron boxes. Big iron will quietly and gracefully fade away, instead, with expendable COTS replacing it, over time. Maybe fewer, as performance increases, but the typical thing is and will be commodity, be it x86 or ARM.

 

[Mixolydian]

x86 should've died in the 90's, and RISC processors (such as PowerPC) should've taken over. But obviously that didn't happen.

 

[galego]

By forever i mean a long, long, long time...

I´m asking this because how is it possible to change a cpu architecture worlwide?
How much time would it take to software developers to change programs and how to live with two major architectures at the same time?

I dont´t know if i´m being clear. Sorry for my english.

Nobody knows if x86 will remain as a niche or not, but the world is already changing to a new arch. Users are massively moving away from x86 to ARM and the trend will continue next year

AMD will be substituting x86 servers (jaguar arch.) with ARM servers this year.

ARM is also starting to substitute x86 in the HPC. The plans to built the most powerful supercomputer in world use ARM instead of x86.