Is It Game Over for the x86 ISA and Intel?
By: Erik Engheim
Tags: Cloud Computing, Amd, Apple, Arm, Intel

Now ironically the PC itself and Intel have become the new RISC workstations. They may hold the performance crown for now.

However smart phones, tablets and all sorts of other embedded devices is where the volume is at. Chip makers such as TSMC, is in large part due to ARM getting such volume that they are able to outspend Intel.

Now Intel are the ones trailing behind in the nano-meter race. A game they used to totally own, because they could outspend everybody else.

Does Intel Even Have a Performance Advantage?

It has become a truthism that ARM chips are weak. Yet in the laptop space we saw that Apple’s iPad Pro when they came out beat most of their own intel based laptops on performance. That was insane as those ARM chips cost a fraction of the Intel chips used in their laptops. Not to mention they where passively cooled.

That makes you wonder what performance you could get from an ARM chip with the same power/watt budget as an intel chip an an Apple laptop.

I don’t think it is a stretch to imagine that Apple’s ARM laptops will outperform Intel laptops. It depends a bit on what they aim for. Perhaps they only seek to match Intel performance but give superior battery life time. Either way, Intel laptops will likely have a hard time competing with ARM laptops in the future.

So what you say “Intel gets most of their income from Cloud Data Centers. Apple laptops are a drop in the ocean!” Ok not totally, but a very large and growing portion of their revenue.

Except this Intel stronghold is under siege by multiple ARM armies.

Amazon AWS has with the custom Graviton2 chips completely demolished intel on price/performance:

If you’re an EC2 customer today, and unless you’re tied to x86 for whatever reason, you’d be stupid not to switch over to Graviton2 instances once they become available, as the cost savings will be significant.

Ampere is coming out with 128-core ARM beast for cloud computing, twice the number of cores of any x86 offerings.

Yes they may not outperform x86 in every setting, but threat of ARM is at this point no longer a joke. x86 is being assaulted on home turf.

This process will begin to work in lockstep. As more people are seeing cost savings going with ARM cloud solutions, they are also going to want to have ARM laptops to develop on.

Running and testing on the same hardware platform locally as you deploy on is always an advantage. To quote Linus Torvalds:

That’s bull***t. If you develop on x86, then you’re going to want to deploy on x86, because you’ll be able to run what you test “at home” (and by “at home” I don’t mean literally in your home, but in your work environment).

With ARM based laptops Apple provide that final piece of the puzzle that threatens the x86 server dominance. As Linus points out, once you got viable ARM laptops, ARM in the server room starts to make sense:

my argument wasn’t that ‘ARM cannot make it in the server space’ like some people seem to have read it. My argument was that ‘in order for ARM to make it in the server space, I think they need to have development machines.’

This is where the advantage of ARM based Mac laptops really start to come together. Let us look at that in more detail.

The Triple Advantage of ARM Mac Laptops for Professionals

When I worked as a consulted doing mobile app development, we often used Mac for the simple reason that it meant that we had one computer which could be used for Java server development, Android and iOS development.

This advantage will simply be amplified with ARM. An ARM based Mac will be able to run both Android and iOS applications natively. There is no need for emulators, simulators or whatever. Mobile App developers are going to like that.

When you can throw in that the same laptop can also be used to test solutions for the AWS solution with best bang for the buck, the proposition only gets stronger.

But we are not done yet. These laptops will also likely have the best battery life.

Why on earth would you then go with a PC laptop to run Windows? Windows for ARM will most likely be available anyway. Sure it may not run every Windows app, but so what? The money for developers is not in making Windows desktop apps. The money is in cloud deployment and mobile Apps. Both areas where ARM will dominate.

How Apple Will Get the Ball Rolling

This is the point where you should realize that laughing at the importance of Apple’s 9–10% marketshare impact is premature.

They have a big part of the profitable premium segment. It is like their phones. They have a relative small part of the market but has 66% of the profit of the smartphone market. Apple gets 60% of the PC hardware profits, despite only selling 7.5% of computers. It is easy to forget just how big Apple is by just looking at marketshare.

With these advantages Apple will be able to crush the remaining competition in the premium segment and steal ever more of the total profits in the laptop market.

Not to mention anybody who want to run a Windows for ARM on higher performance hardware will have to get a Mac, as Microsoft’s ARM offerings have been pathetic.

Once this trend develops PC makers and Microsoft are going to start throwing bucket loads of cash at an ARM transition to make sure they are not experiencing an iPod or iPhone moment for the second/third time.

This will only further increase the ARM spending advantage over x86.

ARM is doing to x86 what PC did to everybody else in the 90s. By being an open platform with multiple chip makers you got fierce competition which will drive prices down and boost innovation.

x86 is Outgunned

ARM is coming at x86 from all corners. There is a wave of different companies throwing money at the problems. x86 is getting outgunned and like RISC workstations in the 1990s there simply is no quick fix or silver bullet to get out of this predicament.

If they try to become another ARM maker they will have to sacrifice way too much profit. Hence they face the same predicament NOKIA faced when deciding on whether to become an Android maker or not.

They didn’t want to take the hit, but the end result was that the whole company collapsed. Intel may risk the same if they double down on x86 instead of doing a strategic withdrawal and regrouping.

What About AMD?

AMD enjoys a certain niche dominance on game consoles and gaming rigs. I don’t see any ARM guys coming after that market any time soon.

Also AMD has the benefit of not manufacturing their own chips. They can utilize the big chip makers.

Thus in many ways AMD may survive longer than Intel. But it is a tough call to make. Intel sits on a large pile of cash and can sustain quite a lot of losses for some time.