Intel is still top dog: ships 3x more CPUs than AMD and Apple combined

Re:Intel is still top dog: ships 3x more CPUs than AMD and A... by ahartmetz on Thursday March 21, 2024 @12:06PM (#39780408)

Your explanation is great except for the beginning of the story: in the 80s and early 90s, CISC cores didn't have a CISC to RISC decoder frontend - they implemented complex instructions directly (though with the help of microcode). The size penalty of that was more like 300%, and it was slower, too(!). RISC was a really big deal at the time. It was even mentioned in the, ahem, documentary "Hackers" from 1995.

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Re:Intel is still top dog: ships 3x more CPUs than AMD and A... by bryanlarsen on Thursday March 21, 2024 @12:49PM (#39781091)

A "CISC to RISC decoder" isn't properly a decoder, it's a translator. What they had in the 80's were proper decoders: instruction's in, enable and clock lines out.

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Re:Intel is still top dog: ships 3x more CPUs than AMD and A... by ahartmetz on Thursday March 21, 2024 @01:09PM (#39781391)

I don't want to argue about that. My point is just that the size (transistor count) and performance differences were massive at the time, like 2-3x the performance at 1/4th or so of the size.

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