x86 instruction proprietary extensions: a waste of time, money and energy

[turbox997]

Summarized: Intel and AMD's proprietary x86 additions cost us all money. How much is hard to calculate, but our CPUs are consuming extra energy and underperform as decoders and execution units are unnecessary complicated. The software industry is wasting quite a bit of time and effort supporting different extensions.

Interesting little article pressed by Johan De Gelas and based on an opinion by a Danish software developer.


Should 99% of market lose money and flexibility because 1% of the market might get a performance boost?

The reason why Intel and AMD still continue with this is that some people inside feel that can create a "competitive edge". I believe this "competitive edge" is neglible: how many people have bought an Intel "Nehalem" CPU because it has the new SSE 4.2 instructions? How much software is supporting yet another x86 instruction addition


They want them to standardize extensions, which sounds like a good idea.


linked (http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=661)

[Pontos]

Let's hope so! I'm kinda disappointed with the SSE4a instructions from my CPU, which are less useful than a floppy drive...

Up to SSE3 it was pretty much stable (MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 for every CPU, 3DNow being the exception, but barely used anyway), with AMD being one generation behind.
Then came SSSE3, SSE4.x SSE4a, and even the announced SSE5 by AMD, and developing software became a lobbyist sport...

[turbox997]

Let's hope so! I'm kinda disappointed with the SSE4a instructions from my CPU, which are less useful than a floppy drive...

Up to SSE3 it was pretty much stable (MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 for every CPU, 3DNow being the exception, but barely used anyway), with AMD being one generation behind.
Then came SSSE3, SSE4.x SSE4a, and even the announced SSE5 by AMD, and developing software became a lobbyist sport...

You're right, it's pretty much been a "I'm gonna one up you" war between Intel and AMD since then.

[Hornet331]

Its a factor of market penetration, if you want to sell software to the broad mass they always will use the lowest common determinant, which right now is SSE3 (not SSSE3).

When CPUs with support for SSE4 reach a certain total marketshare you also will see more software that will support it. But i think this will still take some time, SSE4(.1) was introduced with Core2 (45nm), and there are still many people out there that are using Core2 (65) and even P4s.

AMd falls flat for SSE4 since they have there own version, maybe we see it with bulldozer.

[zalbard]

Yeah, this means SSE4 will not be mass supported by software for quite a while. :(
But standardization is a good idea. It was getting ridiculous with AVX.

[nn_step]

Given that only 41 instructions are required for 97% of x86 performance for the top 2,000 open source applications. I really don't see x86 instruction extensions as being something so bad; software and firmware and easily map around such problems. If he is really concerned, he can always attempt a transmetta [design a cpu with only the instructions you want and just emulate the instructions you don't want]

[haylui]

lolz
industrial standard?
all the organization behind the so-called industrial standard is to make profit, make money and own large portion of market share....

[Nikolasz]

I dont need amd or intel, do you ?

x86 mmx Cyrix was good!!!


mc68000 series was more powerfull then 286!


Why "We" keep using 30 years old standard????????

[Glow9]

I dont need amd or intel, do you ?

x86 mmx Cyrix was good!!!


mc68000 series was more powerfull then 286!


Why "We" keep using 30 years old standard????????

Because competition only wants so much competition.

[Serpentarius]

lolz
industrial standard?
all the organization behind the so-called industrial standard is to make profit, make money and own large portion of market share....

bingo!
that's the main point of having a business. to live the capitalist dream.


like my ol' dad used to say: We're making business here, son. Not doing a charity.

[saaya]

should be like with directx, independant third party decides whats going to get added...

[Boissez]

bingo!
that's the main point of having a business. to live the capitalist dream.


like my ol' dad used to say: We're making business here, son. Not doing a charity.

Meh... True capitalism requires a free and competitive market. x86 is just a subtle way to work the market to reduce competition.

[madcho]

should be like with directx, independant third party decides whats going to get added...

I agree, X86 should be an open licence with independant third party who create new instructions & extentions.

Direct X should be the same, monopoly is bad for customers, not for buisness mens sadly. :rolleyes:

[zalbard]

DirectX pretty much killed off OpenGL, though, which was pretty open, too. :p:

[amdinside]

Yes, there are huge investments in the old x86. And everybody is still interested in it.
In my opinion, we all need something new (after 30+ years of domination of x86)... but we won't see it soon. :mad: