The shape of the x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) is evolving. On Tuesday, Intel and AMD announced the formation of an ecosystem advisory group intended to drive greater consistency between the brands' x86 implementations.
Intel and AMD have been co-developing the x86-64 instruction for decades. But while end user workloads have enjoyed cross-compatibility between the two chipmakers' products, this has been far from universal.
"x86 is the de facto standard. It's a strong ecosystem, but it's one that really Intel and AMD have co-developed in a way, but an arm's length, and you know, that has caused some inefficiencies and some drift in portions of the ISA over time." AMD EVP of datacenter solutions Forrest Norrod said during a press briefing ahead of the announcement.
Going forward, Intel, AMD, and their industry partners aim to avoid this kind of inconsistency by converging around a more uniform implementation. To support this goal, the duo has solicited the help of Broadcom, Dell, Google, HPE, HP, Lenovo, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, as well as individuals, including Linux kernel-dev Linus Torvalds and Epic's Tim Sweeney.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/15/intel_amd_x86_future/
Tällaista yhteistyötä olisi tuskin tapahtunut ilman ARMia ja Risc-V:tä.
With that said, a more consistent ISA could help stave off the growing number of Arm-compatible CPUs finding homes in cloud datacenters. While the exact cores used by these chips may differ — most use Arm's Neoverse cores, but some, like Ampere have developed their own — most are using either the older ARMv8 or ARMv9 ISAs, ensuring that with few exceptions code developed on one should run without issue on the other. ®
https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/15/intel_amd_x86_future/
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