On Mon, Mar 13, 2017 at 5:13 PM, Hendrik Boom hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
bottom line, if AMD want to stay in business they need to get out of x86. part-hardware-emulated x86 fine (like the Loongson 3H architecture did), non-x86, fine. pure x86: dying and dead very soon.
Intel already tried that a *long* time ago, with the Itanium. It was provided with software that emulated the x86. But AMD made a 64-bit hardware version of the x86 and took over the market because its hardware outran the emulation on the Itanium, forcing Intel to follow suit or lose the Windows market.
i assume they tried to target the price-performance market as opposed to the price-performance-watt market. at that top-end they would lose.
Is the situation different now?
yes.
With an ARM version of Windows, and Microsoft's now proven ability to port Wondows to new architectures, quite possibly.
that's going (eventually) to eat into the top-end price-performance market as well, but not until x86 hardware-level emulation is common enough to get 70-80% of clock rate AT THE SAME TIME as reducing POWER by 70-80%.
l.