For year now, the x86 microprocessor market has been dominated by Intel and AMD, and the rivalry between the two companies forced both to be innovative in order to gain a competitive advantage over the other - benefiting customers. With the rise of 'mobile internet devices' and low-power budget notebooks, this new market will be enriched by not only Via, but also nVIDIA.
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Member since:2005-07-22
Member since:2006-01-11
Member since:2007-02-11
Yes, but porting code from x86 to ia64 or x86-64 is fairly easy, since the two architectures are reasonably similar. As long as these small-ish devices keep an architecture that has 86 in its name, I hardly think it will lack third party software. Porting Windows to something that has nothing to do with x86, like PPC, ARM and so on -- now that's something.
If we were to talk just about the operating system, Windows CE/Mobile is a fair solution, especially since the development tools are quite good.
Member since:2005-08-11
"Porting Windows to something that has nothing to do with x86, like PPC, ARM and so on -- now that's something. "
Windows used, and still, runs on the PPC, I doubt that it would take a massive effort to re-port it. A version of Windows runs on the xbox 360, which is a 3 core PPC design, it just runs a different userspace.
Edited 2008-06-06 20:06 UTC
Member since:2005-06-30
Sure, NT4 ran on X86, Alpha, MIPS and possibly other architectures (PPC?). I don't think portability for the OS itself is an issue. However, demand for backward compatibility mixed with lack of portability in legacy code led to the domination of the x86 architecture.
Anyway, recent processor architectures have so little to do with the original 8086... The x86 instructions are internally translated to micro-ops. Therefore, the ISA doesn't seem to stifle innovation.
Member since:
2006-06-11
I was thinking that I read a long time ago that NT wasn't originally developed on x86 hardware. This bit from Wikipedia confirms it:
In order to prevent Intel x86-specific code from slipping into the operating system by developers used to developing on x86 chips, Windows NT 3.1 was initially developed using non-x86 development systems and then ported to the x86 architecture.
NT runs on 3 architechtures right now: x86, x64, and IA64. Portability doesn't seem to be an issue. Userland may be a whole different issue though.
Edited 2008-06-06 04:44 UTC