Highlights:

  • The consortium launched by the companies, known as the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group, aims to improve consistency between their instruction sets.
  • The challenges of transferring software between x86 implementations can affect companies’ decisions when purchasing chips.

Recently, Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. collaborated to enhance the x86 instruction set architecture.

In addition to the two chipmakers, the consortium—unveiled at the Open Compute Project Global Summit in San Jose—includes a dozen other prominent members, such as cloud developers, server manufacturers, and the Linux creator.

Central processing units (CPUs) execute applications by translating their code into what are known as instructions. These are basic computing operations, each designed to perform a specific task, such as adding two numbers, moving data to a new memory location, or repeating a calculation. Modern CPUs are capable of executing billions of instructions every second.

An internal framework determines the instructions a processor can execute, called the instruction set architecture (ISA). Intel’s processors use a proprietary ISA known as the x86 architecture, which was first introduced in 1978. AMD’s processors, on the other hand, utilize a modified version of the x86 architecture, referred to as x64.

The newly launched industry consortium, called the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group, aims to enhance the alignment between the instruction sets used by the two companies.

At present, the x86 implementations from the two companies differ in several important ways. For instance, Intel’s version includes a supplementary set of instructions known as Advanced Matrix Extensions, which allow its CPUs to run artificial intelligence models more efficiently than would be possible with the standard x86 instruction set.

Due to these technical differences, transferring software between Intel and AMD chips can be difficult. For instance, an application designed to utilize Intel’s Advanced Matrix Extensions wouldn’t have access to that feature on AMD hardware. To overcome such differences, developers sometimes need to modify their application’s code.

In practice, the challenges of porting software between different x86 implementations can impact companies’ decisions when purchasing chips. For example, a cloud provider with a large Intel-based server cluster may be less inclined to purchase AMD hardware if migrating its applications to the new equipment would result in additional costs.

The newly formed x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group aims to address this challenge. Through the consortium, Intel and AMD intend to align their x86 implementations with a “more unified set of instructions and architectural interfaces.” The more features the two ISAs have in common, the easier it becomes for developers to port applications between them.

In addition to the two chipmakers, the group is supported by ten other prominent technology companies. The roster includes Broadcom Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., Google LLC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., HP Inc., Lenovo Group Ltd., Meta Platforms Inc., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., and IBM Corp.’s Red Hat division. Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games Inc., are also involved.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, “X86 has been foundational to modern computing for over four decades, and we want to ensure it continues to evolve and benefit everyone going forward.”

The group will gather technical feedback from industry stakeholders, including hardware manufacturers, to guide its efforts. This development process is anticipated to be lengthy. Forrest Norrod, AMD’s Executive Vice President of data center solutions, indicated that the initial ISA enhancements from the group are not expected to be implemented in chips for at least a year.

CPUs utilizing x86 technology are mainly found in servers and personal computers. The x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group indicates that its efforts will extend to various other markets, including the connected device sector. This implies that Intel and AMD aim to enhance x86 to become more competitive with Arm Holdings plc’s ISA, which currently powers the majority of the world’s connected devices.