Intel and AMD form advisory group to reshape x86 ISA
Intel and AMD are forming an advisory group with major tech companies to improve x86 instruction set architecture consistency, addressing historical AVX compatibility issues and countering Arm-compatible CPUs in the market.
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Intel and AMD have announced the formation of an advisory group aimed at reshaping the x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) to enhance compatibility and streamline software development. This initiative comes as both companies have historically co-developed the x86-64 instruction set, but inconsistencies have arisen, particularly with advanced vector extensions (AVX). The new group includes major industry players such as Broadcom, Dell, Google, HPE, and Microsoft, as well as notable individuals like Linus Torvalds. The goal is to create a more uniform implementation of the x86 ISA, which would benefit end users by reducing the need for specialized knowledge when choosing between Intel and AMD products. However, the impact of this collaboration may take time to materialize in actual products, as silicon development is a lengthy process. The advisory group aims to address the evolving demands of emerging technologies while potentially phasing out certain extensions like Intel's advanced matrix extensions (AMX). A more consistent ISA could also help counter the increasing presence of Arm-compatible CPUs in cloud data centers, which currently offer better cross-compatibility.
- Intel and AMD are forming an advisory group to improve x86 ISA consistency.
- The group includes major tech companies and aims to enhance software development.
- Historical inconsistencies in AVX compatibility have prompted this collaboration.
- The impact of the group's work may take years to reflect in products.
- A unified ISA could help combat the rise of Arm-compatible CPUs in the market.
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- Many commenters believe x86 will remain relevant due to its established ecosystem and compatibility with peripherals.
- There is a desire for Intel and AMD to collaborate on improving ISA consistency, particularly regarding AVX support.
- Some users express frustration with the complexity and legacy issues of x86, advocating for a shift towards RISC-V.
- Concerns are raised about the potential dominance of ARM and RISC-V architectures, which could threaten x86's market position.
- Several commenters highlight the efficiency of ARM processors, especially in terms of power consumption and performance.
16 commentsARM is a handful of totally incompatible SoCs and you are totally dependent on SoC integrator providing support (hopefully in the form of throw-over-the-fence-and-forget Linux kernel headers, but more common are just kernel binaries) to run it at all. In theory UEFI supports ARM, but can I buy a desktop ARM processor that does? And this is going to be worse with RISC-V because hardware vendor are not interested in providing platform compatibility. So we would be back in pre-PC era platform-wise.
There is no replacement for x86, not because it is impossible to replace, but because no vendor is interested in making one.
In particular, I'd really like AMD and Intel to get on the same page in terms of avx10 / avx512 support.
Many people correctly note that avx512 support is not super relevant today, but this can be laid heavily at the feet of Intel's process troubles and a terrible decision to use ISA for market segmentation purposes.
Zen4/zen5 show that it is possible to implement wide vector units on a cpu in an extremely beneficial way - even if you're running reduced width execution units under the hood, the improved frontend performance is really useful - and also actually saves power, as the decoders and schedulers account for a fair chunk of power consumption these days.
For me though it really emphasizes how much of a threat ARM (and presumably RISCV) architectures are to these two companies.
[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/t...
Lets call the new institutions set AE86. It is old, but fast around corners.
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