Intel Terminates X86S Initiative | Hacker News Reader

Intel Terminates X86S Initiative

tomshardware.com

29 pointsjamesy0ung18 comments

Is there any solid argument for the value of x86 in desktop computing? My watch, phone, laptop, and Mac Pro are all running ARM/RISC and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything.

I have a Ryzen workspace that I pull out to play Doom Eternal every now and then, but is there any significant value proposition besides compatibility?

Performance is often stated as an advantage of x86, but performance per what? Per Watt? Hour? Dollar? Chip size?

One of the things I appreciate about x86 isn’t the instruction set itself, but the relatively open PC platform that developed around it. I like being able to purchase processors, motherboards, RAM, and other components off the shelf, and I also like the relative openness of PCs. ARM’s ecosystem is rather fragmented, and there are many proprietary, un(der)documented systems. While I don’t mind letting go of the x86-64 instruction set, I would be saddened if our future choices for personal computers are less open. I wouldn’t mind using a powerful ARM or RISC-V workstation that is open.

Agreed

I too like to build my PC and swap out the CPU for something faster in the X86-X64 area.

If Intel goes ARM, I might go Raspberry Pi.

There are some ARM and RISC-V boards that boot with an UEFI environment.

This is one: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/motherboards/worl...

PCs are all about customization/flexibility, control, performance, and value (perf/$).

On your watch, phone, or Mac desktop you generally have no choice on OS, not much control on ram, storage, GPU performance, etc. You can't have ECC, you can't expand the ram, can't have 4x M.2 drives, and often can't repair them. Sure you can max out a M2 ultra's ram, but it's going to be pricey.

Do you want Linux (Asahi is trying, but is currently only supporting M1/M2)? Freebsd? ECC memory? 5 disks of spinning rust for ZFS? How about a 96GB ram desktop, fast GPU with 16GB, and 12 fast cores (zen 5) for $1500?

So far ARMs for desktops are either crazy expensive, very limited (Apple), or slow (Qualcomm SXE). If you want to move up to workstation/server class the AMD Siena, Genoa, and Turin are pretty compelling compared to their ARM competitors. Say you need a ton of ram or high memory bandwidth for $750 you can get the Epyc 9115 for $750, motherboards are similar, and you can have 12 64 bit wide DDR5 dimms (actually 24 32 bit wide memory channels) for whatever your memory intensive needs are.

I'm all for ARM, have wanted to buy a Mac studio, but just couldn't justify it compared to a desktop PC that had better support for Linux, better support for numerous LLM stacks, more flexibility, and should be relatively easy to repair and keep running for a decade or so, like my last desktop.

While I don't think ARM = the Apple way, we see that nowadays no one would create a component ecosystem like there was around x86. This would be the death of personal computing, we would just own appliances.

So we should cherish and extend x86 while we can.

That all sounds like effects caused by various companies policies, not things caused by the ISA. IE it's Intel and AMD selling well documented general purpose parts to anyone vs Arm and Qualcomm selling licences and undocumented highly integrated parts to Samsung & Apple, not x86 vs risc.

Probably also IBM for kicking off the pc platform in the first place where anyone could produce compatible parts. If IBM had done that with a 68k instead, it would be 68k instead of x86.

I strongly agree that in theory these things are unrelated, and there's no hard reason someone couldn't make, say, a bunch of PC models and socketed ARM processors that all used nice standardized interfaces and had the same flexibility as x86... but in practice if you want an open platform today you almost certainly want x86. When some alternative gets its act together I'll be thrilled to use it, but we aren't there today.

If we're ignoring compatibility issues, I suspect the quality of the integrated graphics may matter more to the average desktop user than the CPU architecture.

> Is there any solid argument for the value of x86 in desktop computing?

You do not depend on one vendor (Hello Qualcomm), the arch is a bit more open and standardised than ARM , it is more expandable. ARM seems to optimise for power consumption, X86 for speed. And backward compatibility. Running x86 games (or CAD/CAE) on ARM is "challenging".

> but is there any significant value proposition besides compatibility

...Oh, is that all? Do you know how many things in computing have died because they didn't worry about compatibility? IMHO x86 could stay competitive even if it had nothing but compatibility to offer, though it also wins in other places.

> Performance is often stated as an advantage of x86, but performance per what? Per Watt? Hour? Dollar? Chip size?

Per machine it usually wins, especially on single-thread but also at least sometimes multi-thread, and if you're actually using it (i.e. not mostly sitting idle) then x86 does very well on perf per watt.

Calling it “X86S” was setting it up to fail for one. We need a new ISA, not a reinvention of the last.

Why?

Casting Doubt (friend of Fear and Uncertainty) is easy & viral. It's so unclear that it matters at all though.

We have incredibly awesome front ends that reprocess the x86 instructions into more tangible CPU-ish work, micro-opd and macro-opd and op caching. Yes, it is certainly painful to do. But the front end doesn't seem to be super energy intensive and isn't that big.

Ultimately if we did try to build a core where the instruction set was directly executable we would be fixed in place, wouldn't be able to adapt our execution units well. In some ways, having the execution units decoupled from the instruction set allows flexibility & adaption, allows independent evolution, that may have been a strong boon to us. Just saying we should build a better ISA sounds a bit pompous, an immature/negative intolerance to nuamce or demand of perfection - a tear it down mentality - when the complexities of life & machine architecture demand iterative adaptation & change.

If you're a manufacturer that's going to put the industry through the pain of a new ISA, why not start on a clean slate and wipe out 40 years of preconceptions and mistakes? Why not dare to reimagine? If you rework the foundations you can unlock huge leaps that were previously unimaginable.

Apple could have kept using Intel chips and still had MacBooks flying off the shelves for years to come, but they took a risk by tearing it all up and their product is better than ever. (yes, I am aware Apple did not invent their own ISA.)

> that's going to put the industry through the pain of a new ISA,

X86s is supposed to radically simplify the pain, get rid of a very arcane ratcheting up of antiquated unused modes.

It's supposed to decrease pain. And simplify implementation too.

We don't dare to reimagine because it's not clear what ISA would be better or what the wins would really be. Folks like Apple turn to existing ancient instruction sets like ARM rather than reinvent because it works and the ISA doesn't really seem to have that much influence on the core design & performance.

The risk with X86S was that people didn't really know what the corner cases were.

I'd assume if you start with a fairly vanilla system, all modern x86-64 code, then yeah it's going to work fine.

But I could imagine some of the modes and instructions that might get yeeted could cause unforeseen consequences on more "delicate" software. Obviously this means stuff like "386-only binary applications from 1991" but I'd wonder if some of the weird modes are intentionally triggered by things like copy-protection software to make them less easily reverse-engineered.

I just wish they take this opportunity to trim down more than what x86S offered and called it either AE86 or simply 86.

Even better open up this subset of x86 ( AE86 or 86 ) to be completely open ISA. May be it doesn't even have to be backward or x86 compatible.

I know 86 is old and going downhill, but we could always make it fast around the corner.

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