Ask HN: It the trend toward RISC permanent?

5 points·1-6··5 comments

Apple Silicon (TSMC), Intel, ARM Holdings, Windows on ARM... Is this a larger sustained trend? Will Data Centers move toward RISC?

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Permanent is such a permanent word.

I think Microsoft will shift more to an ARM focus.

I think we'll see Intel start offering mass-market chips with ARM instructions in them. IIRC, they are already an ARM licensee.

I think we'll pretty soon see computers with higher RAM requirements because of reduced instructions. It's exciting though as Intel hasn't been able to cross new barriers with CISC. RISC/ARM, RISC-V will one day help us to get massive core counts.

That's a misleading information, because ARM binaries are actually smaller than similar x86 binaries. Here's a tcpdump example:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/254418/difference-b...

MIPS 32 bits -> 502.4K

ARM 32 bits -> 718K

Intel 32 bits (i386) -> 983K

Intel 64 bits (x86_64) -> 1.1M

Intel's x86_64 and AMD's amd64 are RISC underneath. Does that make everything in the mainstream RISC, just that most of it isn't exposed to the user? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5806589/why-does-intel-h...

I don't think RISC vs CISC matters as much as people think it does. Process technology, supply chain relationships, timing, market positioning and other aspects are much much more important. There's a lot of space to put gates in circuit these days.

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