What happens to the computer and tech industry if Intel fails?
The x86 licence still has value to some others in the space, but it seems like Intel could potentially be sold off for parts if it can't sell correct.
The x86 licence still has value to some others in the space, but it seems like Intel could potentially be sold off for parts if it can't sell correct.
How hard would it be for say AMD to make a performant dual-ISA CPU?
I was thinking somewhat like how virtual 8086 mode[1] worked on 32bit CPUs, ie OS could be ARM-based, but it could run x86 processes.
I assume it would be hard to not sacrifice performance for one of the ISAs, but if it's for legacy applications you wouldn't need top speed necessarily.
Are ARM and x86 just too different to make it work? Are there other obstacles?
It's not really true. The uops are highly related to the input instructions. There's enough room in a big desktop CPU to fit a big complex decoder yes, but it's a waste of space you could be using for other things, namely even more caches.
But the main reason not to do it is that you can do emulation or recompilation in software instead.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Licensing
(From the above link, US6889312B1 actually had its patents mistakenly transferred to Philips which seemingly went unnoticed for 18 years)