Intel and AMD Form an x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group

Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: Intel and AMD have jointly announced the creation of an x86 ecosystem advisory group to bring together the two companies as well as other industry leaders -- both companies and individuals such as Linux creator Linus Torvalds. Intel and AMD are forming this x86 ecosystem advisory group to help foster collaboration and innovations around the x86 (x86_64) ISA. [...] Besides Intel amd AMD, other founding members include Broadcom, Dell, Google, HPE, HP Inc, Lenovo, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat. Here are the "intended outcomes" for the group, as stated in the press release: The intended outcomes include:
- Enhancing customer choice and compatibility across hardware and software, while accelerating their ability to benefit from new, cutting-edge features.
- Simplifying architectural guidelines to enhance software consistency and standardize interfaces across x86 product offerings from Intel and AMD.
- Enabling greater and more efficient integration of new capabilities into operating systems, frameworks and applications.

Really?

[sconeu]

One of the rationales is:

Enhancing customer choice and compatibility across hardware and software

If this is the case, then why are Microsoft and Oracle involved?

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[dfghjk]

and why Linus? What value, beyond political, does he provide?

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[gweihir]

Who says this whole thing is not political?

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[AvitarX]

I imagine he has some insight into what features would be beneficial to things running well and which would be a waste of chip space.

He's only one perspective, but definitely one I'd want when planning out new features for a next generation chips.

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[Bentbob]

This is a wild ass guess: MS/Linus/etc are involved to get the hardware and software people talking more amongst each other.

The Win 11 24H2 update affecting Ryzen CPU performance, and it being released after the launch of the first Ryzen 9000 CPUs, is all the evidence required why there is a real value in discussion between parties in the x86 space (both hardware and software).

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[MachineShedFred]

Political value is still value. And if he wasn't involved and it was just Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat everyone would be screaming conspiracy theories.

At least we have a reasonable chance of him calling others on their bullshit, and we know he won't just shut up and take it if they're trying some shit. He has no problem with blowing whistles on bullshit (unless it's his own flavor of bullshit, but that's what the other guys are for - to call him on his too).

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[arglebargle_xiv]

I think that's it, it's a political move. Can you imagine Intel, before things went downhill for them, ever deciding to consult with others before they did something?

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[gweihir]

Because it is a lie.

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[Kwirl]

This is pretty obviously an attempt to stop Apple from just slapping their silicone into everything and making it the 'standard'

intended outcome #4

[Alworx]

- weaken ARM

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[rsilvergun]

Or just survive against arm. The vast vast majority of users want laptops and they don't play games on their computers, at least nothing more complicated than a crossword puzzle.

And arm based laptops are still kicking Intel's ass on battery life. Once you get to 12 hours there's no practical reason for more battery life for most users but a lot of users like only having to plug their laptop in occasionally and OLED screens guzzle battery life so having a more efficient chipset offsets that and lets you

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[dfghjk]

it's a conspiracy to compete!

What took them so long?

[VaccinesCauseAdults]

The basic x86 instruction set is 46 years old. 8086 was released in 1978.

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[VaccinesCauseAdults]

I picked the 8086 because it is the first Intel chip in the x86 lineage. Neither the 8008 nor the 8080 could be accurately described as having the x86 instruction set by any reasonable definition.

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[Cassini2]

Many of the instructions were clones of the earlier 8080A [wikipedia.org], and that was one of the decisive reasons for the platforms success too. Specifically, DOS and BASIC predated the x86 as Z80/8080A programs. Other than some strange stuff with the CP and A registers having reversed byte orders, it was really easy to take 8080A code and make it into x86 code. (I made an emulator to do this.)

The roots of software compatibility run deep. The first successful microprocessor defined the major instruction set for the

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[Cassini2]

Correction: The flags and A registers have reversed byte orders.

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[VaccinesCauseAdults]

Thanks, yes I’m aware of most that, but always interesting for others to hear. My first computer had a Z80 — in the Sinclair ZX81, and I did assembly language dev on that and 6502 (C64) and later on Amiga and Macintosh. The instruction set and large orthogonal registers of 68000 were brilliant compared to x86 (even now!). I selected the 8086 as a reasonable baseline for the true “start” of x86. I thought if I chose 8080 or even 8008 or 4004 someone would say that is not x86!

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[dfghjk]

the basic instruction set that's not used any more? How old is 64 bit x86?

Also, ARM is 45 years old.

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[VaccinesCauseAdults]

Even when executing on latest hardware and compiled with latest compilers in 64-bit, many original 8086 instructions are used, often in their original short form and addressing modes, with identical opcode encoding and behaviour. If you attach a debugger to a random process on a modern x86 machine, and examine the instructions executing on a random thread, there is a good chance that many will appear in the original 8086 manual.

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[erice]

It took so long for Intel to weaken to the point where it needed to work with others (especially AMD) rather than just forcing everyone else to follow their lead. The AMD64 debacle did not cut deeply enough.

Another requested bullet point

[MachineShedFred]

Would have been nice to have at least some lip service towards secure chip design that doesn't require disabling performance features you paid for to not leak data.

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[VaccinesCauseAdults]

Off topic, but regarding your profile quote. They seem to have finally fixed the issue in the last few months. Quotes and apostrophes finally work — here’s an “example” with em-dashes too. This is written directly on an iPhone.

ARM must be doing good

[backslashdot]

For Intel and AMD to join together, they must really be scared of ARM or even RISC V (even though RISC V sucks, it has potential).