By: Peter Lewis (peter.delete@this.notyahoo.com), June 1, 2022 3:55 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
>> I think x86 will eventually be killed by variable length instruction decode, Moore’s law slowing
>> down, availability of software binary translation from x86 to something else and most low-performance
>> software running on top of JavaScript. The x86 instruction sets will eventually have the same market
>> significance as the IBM 360 instruction set. I own Intel stock and I’m not selling because I think
>> it will take more than 20 years for x86 to be displaced from the dominant position it has today.
>
> Why? What are the market forces that you believe will displace x86? What do you think will replace it, RISC-V?
My guess is the higher complexity and higher power consumption of x86 will eventually allow ARM implementations to outperform x86 implementations. Apple’s M1 P-cores currently decode 8 instructions per clock, while Intel’s Golden Cove cores in Alder Lake and Sapphire Rapids decode 6 instructions per clock. When ARM implementations are decoding 32 instructions per clock, it will be very difficult for x86 implementations to keep up.
The technical merits of an instruction set doesn’t affect its market success all that much but instruction sets do start to matter when other more important differences between two products (process technology, implementation quality, compilers, libraries, ...) become closer to equal. When Intel had a big lead in process technology, that was more than enough to make up for any deficiencies in the x86 instruction set.
The economic benefit of semiconductor scaling is slowing down but customers still need more performance for the same price. Computer architecture and packaging/interconnect technology are the only known ways to fill that gap. If the price/performance ratio of x86 processors stops improving, there will be pressure to use ARM or something else. On the other hand, there is a lot of inertia in the computer industry so I think Intel will be fine for the next 20 years, even if x86 implementations fall behind in some measures of performance.
If you or anyone else has a different opinion, I am very interested in hearing it.
>> down, availability of software binary translation from x86 to something else and most low-performance
>> software running on top of JavaScript. The x86 instruction sets will eventually have the same market
>> significance as the IBM 360 instruction set. I own Intel stock and I’m not selling because I think
>> it will take more than 20 years for x86 to be displaced from the dominant position it has today.
>
> Why? What are the market forces that you believe will displace x86? What do you think will replace it, RISC-V?
My guess is the higher complexity and higher power consumption of x86 will eventually allow ARM implementations to outperform x86 implementations. Apple’s M1 P-cores currently decode 8 instructions per clock, while Intel’s Golden Cove cores in Alder Lake and Sapphire Rapids decode 6 instructions per clock. When ARM implementations are decoding 32 instructions per clock, it will be very difficult for x86 implementations to keep up.
The technical merits of an instruction set doesn’t affect its market success all that much but instruction sets do start to matter when other more important differences between two products (process technology, implementation quality, compilers, libraries, ...) become closer to equal. When Intel had a big lead in process technology, that was more than enough to make up for any deficiencies in the x86 instruction set.
The economic benefit of semiconductor scaling is slowing down but customers still need more performance for the same price. Computer architecture and packaging/interconnect technology are the only known ways to fill that gap. If the price/performance ratio of x86 processors stops improving, there will be pressure to use ARM or something else. On the other hand, there is a lot of inertia in the computer industry so I think Intel will be fine for the next 20 years, even if x86 implementations fall behind in some measures of performance.
If you or anyone else has a different opinion, I am very interested in hearing it.
