Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors

Re:Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors by senttoschool on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @08:24AM (#35627251)

What would be the point of this?

Who actually wants to build custom processors with Intel x86 cores?

Obviously, Intel is not going to let you compete with their own products so they will have license limits or gimp the cores available for licensing some how.

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Re:Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors by transpute on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @08:37AM (#35627381)

> Who actually wants to build custom processors with Intel x86 cores?

Hyperscaler?

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Re:Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors by senttoschool on Friday April 21, 2023 @01:42AM (#35650136)

Why would they build their own over buying from AMD or Intel?

If they're going to buy their own, wouldn't it make more sense to use ARM like AWS with Graviton?

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Re:Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors by traverseda on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @08:31AM (#35627324)

Well you could add some x86 specific extensions to RISC-V to significantly speed up x86 emulation?

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Re:Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors by meepmorp on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @02:47PM (#35631822)

If you're using x86 cores to run the code, it's not really emulation.

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Re:Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors by snvzz on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @05:58PM (#35633828)

If you're intel or AMD, you can add a x86 mode to your RISC-V processor.

Even a hardware-based x86 frontend. It could e.g. run usermode code uninterrupted, escaping to RISC-V on syscalls, interrupts, exceptions.

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Re:Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors by peoplearepeople on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @10:14AM (#35628437)

I also think that the corporate-strategy angle for this makes the concept useless. Intel will accidentally clobber you

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Re:Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors by tumetab1 on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @10:42AM (#35628769)

Microsoft and Windows laptop vendors.

A laptop with arm and x86 cores might allow Microsoft to speed up its transition from x86 to ARM in the laptop/mobile world.

No idea on viability but sounds fun :D

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Re:Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors by snvzz on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @06:04PM (#35633896)

>A laptop with arm and x86 cores might allow Microsoft to speed up its transition from x86 to ARM in the laptop/mobile world.

I simply don't see this transition happening. Microsoft is working on a RISC-V port (as per RISC-V CTO talks in the RISC-V Summit), and Qualcomm is unlikely to release many more generations of ARM-based SoCs (as per the lawsuit, and as per Qualcomm's own talks in the RISC-V Summit).

The only way forward is RISC-V.

x86 is finally going away, and RISC-V is its replacement.

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Re:Intel to license x86 CPU cores for use in custom processors by marssaxman on Wednesday April 19, 2023 @12:24PM (#35630118)

Think "processor" in the sense of "coprocessor", not in the sense of "CPU". There are enormous numbers of chips which embed multiple processor cores, often with heterogeneous architectures. Consider Intel's own Movidius VPU, which includes two different LEON cores (SPARC) and 16 SHAVE cores (VLIW vector processors) all on the same die. There are many options for the cores used in such a device - ARM, RISC-V, MIPS are common - and now Intel wants Xeon cores to be an option too.

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