Re:More on x86 – The Chip Letter
by The_Colonel on Thursday April 25, 2024 @02:33PM
(#40161313)
> Thanks to emulation, x86 software lock in is no more, and the moat loses its significance.
With reduced performance and efficiency, so one might ask what's the point for a consumer to buy such a device. PC laptop vendors don't have anywhere close to the market power to force such change. Meanwhile, AMD/Intel can simply lower their prices for a while, when RISC-V PCs/laptops will appear to become a potential threat.
> Thanks to emulation, x86 software lock in is no more, and the moat loses its significance.
Tell me you've never attempted to performantly emulate x86 without saying those words. As a small example, go look into the difference between x86 memory model and the weak memory models used by modern architectures, when it comes to ordering of accesses as seen by other cores.
These microarchitectures come from many vendors at once, and will make a significant impact.
Not long after, Windows for RISC-V will appear; Microsoft has been working on it for years, while steering the RISC-V committee to prioritize its requirements.
Thanks to emulation, x86 software lock in is no more, and the moat loses its significance.
AMD and/or Intel will offer RISC-V CPUs with x86 acceleration as distinguishing feature, thus retaining a decent slice of the market through this transition, which will not take anywhere as much as x86 32 to 64 did.