[Hardware] Why won't Intel and AMD stop making x86 processors?

[EvKirito]

 

 

With what has happened in recent months, one of the things that is most talked about is ARM, either because of the transition of Apple processors or because of the purchase of NVIDIA. Suddenly the ARM register and instruction set has become the talk of all, to the point where it is said that Intel and ARM could abandon x86 processors. But to what extent is that feasible?.

 

Intel and AMD have long dominated the market for PC processors, thanks to the fact that they have the exclusive power to manufacture CPUs capable of executing x86-64 code, but at the same time we do not stop reading and hearing that x86's days are numbered and that even when the time comes, both Intel and AMD could go 100% ARM.

 

Why is there so much talk about ARM lately?

 

Due to two events that have occurred this year, on the one hand, the fact that Apple has stopped using Intel x86 processors for its Macintosh computers to create its own processors, based on the ARM set of registers and instructions. The second reason has been for the purchase of ARM Holdings by NVIDIA, both events have put ARM in the front row of the news.

 

A market too crowded for the taste of Intel and AMD

 

ARM's business model is to license its processors so that others can make clones of them or create technology compatible with them, in exchange ARM Holdings takes a small royalty for the rights to use the technology.

Intel and AMD, on the other hand, have the exclusive use of the whole of the x86-64 ISA, through a series of crossed patents between the two companies, they enjoy an agreed oligopoly in which if you want to be able to execute a program compiled in x86- 64 you will need to use a processor from these two brands, this causes a lack of price competition that keeps the prices of these processors high.

If Intel and AMD entered the ARM market then there would be more to spread the cake, which means price competition and less profit for them.