The Future

At the very least, in the long run x86 will finally have to be abandoned. x86 has been hacked, mangled, sliced, diced, re-packaged, and ultimately trivialized as a universal CISC access layer for two wildly different RISC solutions underneath. Everything since - and including - Intel's original 32-bit extensions to the x86 instruction set has been a hack job. High quality hack jobs, but these modifications are add-ons to an ancient and inferior computing system. Sooner or later, no matter how trivialized x86 becomes, its limitations will grow to be such a burden that both companies will be forced to develop non-x86, and thus very likely proprietary, solutions. Once that happens, the market will decide which it likes more and the competitor will choke and die like Beta vs. VHS. Of course, for all we know, IBM or Transmeta or any other company might come up with a completely different solution that catches on while both AMD and Intel are fixated on x86.

More likely, AMD or Intel will develop their own proprietary instruction set, and deliver acceptable x86 performance at the same time. Itanium tried to do this, but its x86 performance is, by all accounts, mediocre. AMD's 64-bit extensions meanwhile, are still simply an addition to x86, rather than a new instruction set that AMD owns the rights to.

When will this happen? I'm not dumb enough to hypothesize and be immortalized with a quote like "640k should be enough for everybody", but I will say that multi-core processors are certainly a major step in that direction. How long before either company figures out how to pack its x86 core - be it Athlon or Pentium - along with another chip with the unique instructions? From there AMD or Intel would have to ensure that the infrastructure is in place to support it.

Though the market is certainly aware of the consequences of switching to a proprietary system, if the performance boost on that system is significant enough and the package remains affordable, it will happen. From then on, it will be a processor generation or two before the leading company simply kills off x86 support, citing unnecessary costs and low usage statistics.

That's my hot air for the week. Drop by our forums and comment on it.