Intel Publishes "X86-S" Specification For 64-bit Only Architecture

[NeoMorpheus]

From Intel's article:

Cool. According to Intel, they invented AMD64. How dare them...

Came here to say the same.

They haven’t learned to be humble.

I hope that AMD keeps taking market share away, so Intel continues losing money.

its going to be hard though. At work, we are a Dell/Intel shop(over 20K heads) and no matter what, they dont even consider buying any other brand or with Ryzen. One of them told me with a straight face that Ryzen is not 100% compatible with Windows and Linux programs like Intel is.

Multibillion company IT dept run by morons.

[skeevy420]

The problem with an accessory device is that it won't work for natively booting anything 32-bit, which really is the main appeal of retaining the compatibility. The secondary appeal is anyone who might still be running a Windows version older than 11, where those are highly unlikely to get 32-bit x86 emulation, so, your suggestion would be fine for that. However... OSes older than W11 don't work so well with hybrid CPUs, so... I'm not sure those OSes are going to figure out how to use an accessory CPU.

Well, I very seriously doubt any non-free commercial OS older than Win11 will be updated to work with X86-S. I say that because Windows 10 loses support in the next year. Due to that, anyone needing an addon driver for Windows 7 or 10 is extremely moot and unnecessary because those won't be supported operating systems in a year or three when X86-S and subsequent hypothetical addon cards go from idea to product. Linux is the same way. Unless Intel partners up with RHEL, Ubuntu, or SUSE ahead of time to backport a bunch of stuff to one of their LTS kernels you'll have to be on Fedora or Arch running a mainline kernel to even use this when it's released (and for the foreseeable future).

I didn't even consider and could care less about native 32-bit booting. As long as it can be used by virtualization software it's good enough. My idea of "native booting" would be a systemd service that autostarts the legacy OS in a virtual environment. What's really neat would be if you had multiple accessory cards you could run every aviation program/OS in parallel for both redundancy and safety by having the host OS scan the output for quirks.

In regards to legacy OS support, hybrid CPUs would be in the same boat above as an addon card. Try using Ryzen or Icelake on XP today. It won't work. At some point we have to bite the bullet and move on. We did it a few years ago with Rzyen and various InteLakes and we'll need to do it again with this. Keeping hybrid CPUs around, which have never worked that well to begin with, just because some neckbeard doesn't want to upgrade from Windows 7 32-bit is idiotic. The neckbeard needs to update their environment and update their workflow to the new ways of doing things instead of holding the rest of the world back.

Moreover, keeping 32 and 64-bit separate allows the CPU manufacturers to be more fluid in regards to hardware updates. They won't have to retool their CPU line because of advancements in either 32 or 64-bit computing or intentionally hold advancements back since lots of small retoolings can become very expensive when compared to a few massive retoolings.

[dragorth]

Wouldn't be the first time. For Motorola macs in the 90s you could get x86 cards to run pc software on. Probably best approach would be a fpga card now.

I mean, the current Intel lineup literally has FPGAs built in. My argument is that the already made and designed cores they are already using that will work for every piece of software ever written and free up that valuable real-estate they are adding at much cost is the better option.

They already have the designs, they have all the OSes able to distinguish between the different core types, and they couls limit it to one core since realistically one core running 2 to 3 times faster than most 32bit only software was written for should be enough for most use cases.

The Amiga also had those, and you can still buy a PCIMG card with a 64bit Intel CPU to put in an Amiga. This one can run a Core i7 LGA 1150 CPU, which are Haswell and Broadwell chips, and the boards support 16GB of memory with Intel built-in graphics which puts it in Windows 11 territory, so Linux can run on it, and I am sure someone may be able to make it a Hackintosh. It doesn't connect directly to the original system like the original Amiga card did, but it can use other ISA boards on the same bus, so original SB cards.

I don't think the Mac Dos cards directly interface with the Mac, they were essentially separate systems, right?

https://www.advantechboards.net/advantech/pca-6028g2-00a1e

These particular models use the PCIMG 1.0 standard, the PCIMG 1.3 standard connects using PCI-E and have even more modern CPUs that might be a better fit than an FPGA.

They would run all the time and are a full on system, however, so much more power hungry than just having cores that can be put into really low power modes and aren't running a full on OS by themselves.

[dragorth]

The problem with an accessory device is that it won't work for natively booting anything 32-bit, which really is the main appeal of retaining the compatibility. The secondary appeal is anyone who might still be running a Windows version older than 11, where those are highly unlikely to get 32-bit x86 emulation, so, your suggestion would be fine for that. However... OSes older than W11 don't work so well with hybrid CPUs, so... I'm not sure those OSes are going to figure out how to use an accessory CPU.

Even if you don't read their PDF, the linked page from Intel suggests they have some idea of an emulation mode for those instances. Considering it is Intel and they have their own hypervisor already, this makes sense.

That being said, my previous reasons still stand, at least in the interim, at least one E-Core that can do 32bit makes sense during the transition.

[rmfx]

Just drop this crap and go RISC-V.

… but they are too afraid that any startup from anywhere in the world could beat them releasing better cpus and make them look like what they are: an overrated scam.

That’s why they gave up the phone market: they were not good enough.

so likely they will do whatever they can to maintain the x86 duopoly they rely on to stay relevant.

[CochainComplex]

From Intel's article:

Cool. According to Intel, they invented AMD64. How dare them...

Yes it is interesting how they phrase it. This is why everybody is not trusting big companies. What would they loose if they would be honest?

[jeisom]

They already have the designs, they have all the OSes able to distinguish between the different core types, and they couls limit it to one core since realistically one core running 2 to 3 times faster than most 32bit only software was written for should be enough for most use cases.

Not sure I would limit it to 1 core, but I'd doubt it'd need more than 4. 2 probably would be plenty as well. And they wouldn't need to improve it beyond fixes as it would be there for compatibility, not full on performance.

I don't think the Mac Dos cards directly interface with the Mac, they were essentially separate systems, right?

Multitasking wasn't much of a thing yet, so I think it was one or the other.

[dragorth]

Not sure I would limit it to 1 core, but I'd doubt it'd need more than 4. 2 probably would be plenty as well. And they wouldn't need to improve it beyond fixes as it would be there for compatibility, not full on performance.


Multitasking wasn't much of a thing yet, so I think it was one or the other.

I was contrasting it to the Amiga that did interface directly with the Dos cards. They could share the Hard Drive, and run apps on bath at the same time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3rN1NEUA0Q

[schmidtbag]

Even if you don't read their PDF, the linked page from Intel suggests they have some idea of an emulation mode for those instances. Considering it is Intel and they have their own hypervisor already, this makes sense.

I don't understand how you can emulate an architecture at boot time for bare metal. Obviously when it comes to VMs, it's a moot issue.

Well, I very seriously doubt any non-free commercial OS older than Win11 will be updated to work with X86-S.

That's true but it also begs the question why something like this wasn't done years ago. I think Kaby Lake would've been a perfect opportunity for them to do this. Skylake offered x86-64 for those who wanted that on DDR4, and Kaby Lake was otherwise just a boosted version with no noteworthy changes.

I didn't even consider and could care less about native 32-bit booting.

I couldn't care less either but it's really the only compelling reason to keep 32 bit compatibility at the hardware level.

In regards to legacy OS support, hybrid CPUs would be in the same boat above as an addon card. Try using Ryzen or Icelake on XP today. It won't work. At some point we have to bite the bullet and move on. We did it a few years ago with Rzyen and various InteLakes and we'll need to do it again with this. Keeping hybrid CPUs around, which have never worked that well to begin with, just because some neckbeard doesn't want to upgrade from Windows 7 32-bit is idiotic. The neckbeard needs to update their environment and update their workflow to the new ways of doing things instead of holding the rest of the world back.

I completely agree. Even in situations where XP would boot, the scheduler is so dumb that it wouldn't make use of the architectures. If people are stuck with old architectures, they might as well stick with an old OS. Yeah yeah, "what about security!?" but if that was a legit concern then you'd not tether yourself to a dead platform.

[ryao]

Try using Ryzen or Icelake on XP today. It won't work.

https://community.hwbot.org/topic/208849-windows-xp-on-ryzen-5800x-b550-board/