Considering having the ARM architecture is only getting more popular. I was wondering your guy’s opinions on whether x86 will be dead in 10 years.
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Will x86 be dead in a decade?
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No way in heck. To many businesses depend on it.
x86 still has upper hand where power consumption is not a concern, so no.
Dead? No. Severely diminished? Quite possibly…
No. in terms of computers (desktop/laptop) x86 still holds 85+% marketshare. while I see that going down, it's not going to go away in the next decade
No. X86 is already catching up with ARM in terms of performance/watt since they improved their die size.
Simply too much traction involved with x86.
if you think how much code was rewritten for Y2K and the first raising Of the issue was 1958 and yet 40 years later code had to be updated still.
there will be a lot of business apps written where not going to take the time to completely start again with the app that is decades old on x86.
intel tried to replace x86 with ia-64 itanium family and yet x86 evolved with x86-64 and ia-64 is where now. Discontinued
if you think how much code was rewritten for Y2K and the first raising Of the issue was 1958 and yet 40 years later code had to be updated still.
there will be a lot of business apps written where not going to take the time to completely start again with the app that is decades old on x86.
intel tried to replace x86 with ia-64 itanium family and yet x86 evolved with x86-64 and ia-64 is where now. Discontinued
People have been predicting that since the 1980s but it's the most stable platform while Apple has switched from MOS -> 68K -> PowerPC -> x64 -> ARM. Only way that's maybe possible if Apple bought out TSMC and Samsung foundries for internal use only and paid all developers to stop developing for x64. Just for shitz and giggles we'll play along and say 'yes'.
GPT-4 via Bing Chat has limited historical knowledge to about the last decade otherwise it would say more than four or five decades.
We need to get it some drinks to open up. Pretty sure it's powered by Nvidia H100/A100 GPUs and I'm guessing AMD Epyc CPUs.
And now Intel's talking about "X86-S" with some of the legacy stuff removed (requires 64-bit OS, rings 1 and 2 removed, etc).
Or, a little coercion.
Dang, shut down again...
Dang, shut down again...
Even if it was a loss, you could still just use a 16-bit-capable CPU as they're unlikely to go away any time soon. I've been told that Intel still sells the 286, for example (although Wikipedia lists it as discontinued, so I wonder who's right - the reference it gives seems to be someone's personal site).
Edit: I'm going to put that one down as false; Intel's site doesn't list it, so I'm guessing I was fed incorrect information.
You can still purchase 286 through Digikey so someone is still using them probably for embedded systems.
https://www.digikey.com/en/products...rs/694?s=N4IgTCBcDaIJYDsAuBTANgAjADgGwgF0BfIA
Even grand daddy 8088...
https://www.digikey.com/en/products...s/694?s=N4IgTCBcDaIJYDsAuBTANgAgBwAYtZAF0BfIA
Possibly but I doubt it. Technology is always changing and its too hard to predict that far ahead.
Yeah, this would change the calculus quite a bit. I assume the OP meant fully compatible x86 as it’s always been but I think they could do much better if they strip it down and modernize it. The legacy cruft is just an albatross around their necks.
Yes, yes I did 😃 I didn’t learn about x86-S until today, interesting that they’re modernizing the architecture, I’ll have to look up more
Wise guy comment: I half expect x86 will be as impossible to kill off as the maniac in a horror movie franchise! LOL
Seriously, though, I guess x86 is less and less relevant for a lot of people, due to smart phones. But I'd expect it remain very relevant for some settings, like offices.
Seriously, though, I guess x86 is less and less relevant for a lot of people, due to smart phones. But I'd expect it remain very relevant for some settings, like offices.
Outdated and dead are very different things. It's arguably already outdated, but it's a long, looong way from being dead.
Apple can’t even produce ARM based chips on a consistent timeline. Intel for all its faults and iterative revs continues to produce x86 chips like clock work for all the OEMs. Thats just Intel, there is also AMD, too. X86 will lose some traction, but AMD and Intel are not sleeping at the wheel and its in the OEMs and Operating System’s best interest too. Also, diversity is good for competition. There needs to be ARM and x86 as well as others too whatever that might be. I wish Intel had kept at Itanium continue optimizing it even as a research project.
I read that. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but ring 0 and ring 3 are the most important. (plus the hypervisor ring) It would run most of the business stuff I know about. Only the odd hardware/driver situation would trip it up, and that's what ebay is for. (replacement parts.
