Is It Game Over for the x86 ISA and Intel?

How Intel originally won the microprocessor wars against RISC and how that will not save them this time.

Ever since Apple announced they are switching to their own Apple chips with the ARM instruction set I have spent time trying to develop some educated guesses about the future.

The future is not looking good for x86 and Intel, and that is not due to Apple alone, but rather a multiple development all happening in parallel conspiring to unseat Intel and the x86 from the CPU throne.

Let us first look at the big picture.

CPUs Are a Volume Game

Those people who rant on about superior performance of Intel and AMD chips and denounce ARM as weak, have simply not been paying attention to CPU history. In fact they have failed to grasp the very history that brought Intel on the top in the first place.

One of the RISC workstations that ruled the planetary surface in the 90s. An SGI Octane (1997–2000)

Back in the 90s we had NeXT, Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics and several other powerful RISC workstations. These command a hefty premium price, but that worked because they outperformed PCs and their…