Intel and AMD, rare collaboration

Recently, these two chip manufacturers - not the most friendly but also the enemy and friend - joined hands with many companies to establish a new x86 advisory group. The group tried to defend the interests of the platform against ARM, which seems to be finally ready to challenge the dominance of x86.

Other founding members of the alliance include Microsoft, Google and Meta, as well as Lenovo, which announced this news at the Tech World 2024 conference held in Bellevue, Washington. The keynote speech this morning was attended by Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, and Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel, who was not surprised to say that the x86 architecture was "vibrant".

Intel CEO Pat Kissinger said that x86 technology can easily adapt to new laptops with AI functions.

"The rumors about my death have been greatly exaggerated. We are living well," Kissinger said. "We see that the x86 architecture, the basis of computing for decades, is going through a period of customization, expansion and scalability. AI will bring opportunities. Our ecosystem is strong and developing constantly."

Intel invented the so-called x86 computing architecture. This 46 year old x86 architecture is the most popular ISA for general computing in personal computers and data centers. Intel and AMD are the only two major x86 architecture licensors that produce new processors in large quantities, forming a duopoly pattern.

However, the market shares of both companies have been eroded by Arm. Arm has licensed competitive computing architectures to Apple, Qualcomm, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. The former uses them for PCs, while the latter uses them for data centers. Part of the rise of Arm stems from the provisions in its contracts, that is, all ARM chips can run all ARM software, regardless of the chip manufacturer.

In contrast, Intel and AMD use the same underlying x86 technology in their chips, but sometimes the software must be adjusted to run in their products. On Tuesday, the two companies said they were forming an "advisory group" with Broadcom, Dell, Lenovo and Oracle to change this situation.

According to the announcement of the organization, the organization will convene hardware and software companies to obtain their technical opinions on the "basic functions and features" of Intel and AMD chips to ensure that they are "consistent and compatible" in a range of uses.

In the past many years, although he has tried to become a player in the server chip market, he has lost several battles. However, in recent years, they have finally gained a firm foothold in the server market, and the PC market is also coming.

Arm was founded in 1990 by 12 chip designers who were working in a turkey shed in Cambridge. The company was originally a joint venture between Apple, Acorn Computers and VLSI (now part of NXP).

Arm's major breakthrough occurred in 1993, when Apple introduced the early handheld Newton device on the Arm610 processor. According to Ren e Haas, CEO of Arm, this reflects the "characteristics" of the company. "We were born to develop a device that uses low-cost batteries," he said

In the same year, Arm reached an agreement with TI to apply its processor to early Nokia mobile phones, and began to develop into today's leading smartphone architecture. Arm was first listed in 1998. Richard Grisenthwaite, the chief architect, was present.

Grisenthwaite said, "We had about 100 employees at that time, and I was deeply involved in the huge transformation that the company experienced, from targeting a specific market area to expanding to a wide range of different computing environments."

Indeed, Arm has developed rapidly in the 21st century. In 2007, it launched the first touch-screen mobile phone, and in 2010, networked home devices began to grow. The company has also made great strides in this period, becoming the absolute leader of smart phone chip architecture.. Arm is not satisfied with this.

According to a press release, the established goal of the advisory group is to "enhance the compatibility, predictability and consistency of x86 products". The team intends to solicit opinions from x86 hardware and software developers, and hopes to create a "simplified architecture guide" to help standardize the interface between AMD and Intel product lines.

The cooperation between the two companies, together with the input of many customers and end users, will help to establish a more unified approach, reduce or even eliminate customized ISA implementations that may cause problems for hardware and software customers with duopoly. This is even more important because the x86 ecosystem is facing tremendous pressure from Arm in both the consumer and data center markets, not to mention the continued rise of RISC-V.

The new organization intends to standardize at least some of the new additions and modifications to x86 ISA, including several simplification efforts already underway. The fields of modification and collaboration have not been determined yet, but there are many clear candidates for discussion.

This is a goal worth pursuing, but it does not need to go too far. It can be seen that this new organization is to assure developers, customers and (probably mainly) investors that these two companies (essentially the only two x86 chip manufacturers) are taking action against ARM. Integrated chips based on ARM architecture are rising: Apple completely transitioned from Intel chips to ARM based Apple chips in the middle of last year. After ten years of failed attempts, Qualcomm finally proved that it can produce high-quality ARM chips for Windows machines.

Obviously, AMD and Intel feel a bit nervous, and perhaps for good reason: Qualcomm seems to have no signs of slowing down.