Intel and AMD Form an x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group (phoronix.com) 27
Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Intel and AMD have jointly announced the creation of an x86 ecosystem advisory group to bring together the two companies as well as other industry leaders -- both companies and individuals such as Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Intel and AMD are forming this x86 ecosystem advisory group to help foster collaboration and innovations around the x86 (x86_64) ISA. [...] Besides Intel amd AMD, other founding members include Broadcom, Dell, Google, HPE, HP Inc, Lenovo, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat. Here are the "intended outcomes" for the group, as stated in the press release: The intended outcomes include:
- Enhancing customer choice and compatibility across hardware and software, while accelerating their ability to benefit from new, cutting-edge features.
- Simplifying architectural guidelines to enhance software consistency and standardize interfaces across x86 product offerings from Intel and AMD.
- Enabling greater and more efficient integration of new capabilities into operating systems, frameworks and applications.
- Enhancing customer choice and compatibility across hardware and software, while accelerating their ability to benefit from new, cutting-edge features.
- Simplifying architectural guidelines to enhance software consistency and standardize interfaces across x86 product offerings from Intel and AMD.
- Enabling greater and more efficient integration of new capabilities into operating systems, frameworks and applications.
Really? (Score:3)
One of the rationales is:
Enhancing customer choice and compatibility across hardware and software
If this is the case, then why are Microsoft and Oracle involved?
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and why Linus? What value, beyond political, does he provide?
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Who says this whole thing is not political?
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I imagine he has some insight into what features would be beneficial to things running well and which would be a waste of chip space.
He's only one perspective, but definitely one I'd want when planning out new features for a next generation chips.
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This is a wild ass guess: MS/Linus/etc are involved to get the hardware and software people talking more amongst each other.
The Win 11 24H2 update affecting Ryzen CPU performance, and it being released after the launch of the first Ryzen 9000 CPUs, is all the evidence required why there is a real value in discussion between parties in the x86 space (both hardware and software).
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Political value is still value. And if he wasn't involved and it was just Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat everyone would be screaming conspiracy theories.
At least we have a reasonable chance of him calling others on their bullshit, and we know he won't just shut up and take it if they're trying some shit. He has no problem with blowing whistles on bullshit (unless it's his own flavor of bullshit, but that's what the other guys are for - to call him on his too).
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Because it is a lie.
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Apple? You're kidding right? They won't ship their chips in any machine but their own. ARM on the other hand...
intended outcome #4 (Score:4, Insightful)
- weaken ARM
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And arm based laptops are still kicking Intel's ass on battery life. Once you get to 12 hours there's no practical reason for more battery life for most users but a lot of users like only having to plug their laptop in occasionally and OLED screens guzzle battery life so having a more efficient chipset offsets that and lets you
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it's a conspiracy to compete!
What took them so long? (Score:2)
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Re:What took them so long? (Score:4, Informative)
Many of the instructions were clones of the earlier 8080A [wikipedia.org], and that was one of the decisive reasons for the platforms success too. Specifically, DOS and BASIC predated the x86 as Z80/8080A programs. Other than some strange stuff with the CP and A registers having reversed byte orders, it was really easy to take 8080A code and make it into x86 code. (I made an emulator to do this.)
The roots of software compatibility run deep. The first successful microprocessor defined the major instruction set for the next 50 years, with many additions along the way.
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Correction: The flags and A registers have reversed byte orders.
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the basic instruction set that's not used any more? How old is 64 bit x86?
Also, ARM is 45 years old.
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It took so long for Intel to weaken to the point where it needed to work with others (especially AMD) rather than just forcing everyone else to follow their lead. The AMD64 debacle did not cut deeply enough.
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It was called Itanium. You people didn't buy it, so stop crying.
The Itanium was actually Intel's third failed attempt to create a clean sheet CPU. It was preceded by the iAPX 432 in the 80s and the i860 in the 90s. The people didn't buy those either, mainly because all three pretty much sucked.
Another requested bullet point (Score:5, Insightful)
Would have been nice to have at least some lip service towards secure chip design that doesn't require disabling performance features you paid for to not leak data.
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ARM must be doing good (Score:2)
For Intel and AMD to join together, they must really be scared of ARM or even RISC V (even though RISC V sucks, it has potential).
RISC-V Risk (Score:2)
RISC-V is on a trajectory to eat everybody's lunch.
If not for performance than for security, then cost.
Since the x86 abi sits on top of a RISC microcode these days I wonder what would happen if somebody tried it on the RISC-V architecture.
$99 laptops probably.