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blastdoor
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Bad news for lawyers and x86

Wed Jan 13, 2021 1:17 pm

Looks like Qualcomm is spending money on maybe making competitive CPUs for a change.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qual ... SKBN29I1OJ

That means less money for lawyers and more competition for x86.

Seems like good news for most folks, though!
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Flying Fox
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Re: Bad news for lawyers and x86

Fri Jan 15, 2021 7:27 pm

How naive, young grasshopper. The opposite may very well be true where they sue a few more people to extortextract even more money to fund that development.

And x86 is not dead. If such migration is to happen it is going to take a while. But it has been declared dead from the early 90s and on and it still has not happened. Granted I may give it a better chance of happening than the Year of the Linux Desktop :P, but you know the scale I'm talking about now.
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blastdoor
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Re: Bad news for lawyers and x86

Sun Jan 17, 2021 10:41 am

Flying Fox wrote:
How naive, young grasshopper. The opposite may very well be true where they sue a few more people to extortextract even more money to fund that development.

And x86 is not dead. If such migration is to happen it is going to take a while. But it has been declared dead from the early 90s and on and it still has not happened. Granted I may give it a better chance of happening than the Year of the Linux Desktop :P, but you know the scale I'm talking about now.


This is one of those cases where past performance may not predict future success.

I think we can all agree that the technically superior architecture in the 90s was DEC's Alpha. I think two things helped Intel beat DEC back then -- software compatibility and financial resources.

Today, x86 still has a software compatibility advantage in the Windows PC market. However, the importance of this advantage is diminished. With Rosetta2, Apple has almost completely overcome the software compatibility issue. Of course, Apple is a bit unique -- before moving to Apple Silicon, they initiated a pre-emptive purge of older software from the Mac. Microsoft can't get away with something like that. Still, Microsoft can provide better emulation, translation, and migration tools now than they could have in the 90s. Software compatibility is still an advantage for x86, but it's not the insurmountable advantage that it was in the 90s.

Regarding the $$, the story today is radically different. The ARM'd forces of today have collective financial resources VASTLY superior to Intel's. Obviously Apple, all by itself, is VASTLY larger than Intel (that could not have been said about DEC). But even setting Apple aside, the combination of Nvidia, TSMC, and Qualcomm is formidable.
1. iMac 27" (2020) i7 10700k; AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT 8 GB; 64 GB RAM; 500 GB internal SSD + external box of SSDs
2. ThreadRipper 2990wx; Ubuntu; Headless; 64GB RAM
3. MacBook Pro (2017); Core i7-7820HQ; 16 GB RAM

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