Fascinating about how ARM has made tremendous strides in the “high end” market since 2015. I would argue that I would categorize RISC as a “yes” with its absolute dominance on mobile and now moving into data center not to mention all the embedded use cases.
I think the battle between RISC and CISC is overshadowed by the battle between non-x86 and x86. On average are new designs more RISC than CISC? I don't know but that's different from numbers of chips of a certain type sold.
RISC showed what you could do with a clean sheet and the battle has really been about whether we can afford the cost of changing to a new instruction set just because it's better by a bit.
Apple has been through 4 architectures in 30 years. Given enough money and tyranny (as in "were doing this" kind of leadership, vs committee) its apparently not that terrible.
I would have believed this before the M1, but now I think fixed-width instructions are great for parallel decode, so there's a real threat now which is attributable to RISC.
Fixed-width decode only one of the ideas of "RISC," but not the main one. I would argue that modern ARM is almost as much of a CISC-y abomination as was x86 in 1999. ARM has a lot of instructions that do multiple things and are very non-RISC.
POWER is probably the most RISC-y architecture in use at the high end right now, but it still looks like CISC to the people who originally came up with that idea.
At the moment, x86 is mainly hanging on in legacy spaces because of backward compatibility. Everything new is RISC including Apple's newer Macs. Windows computers still run on x86 because people buy Windows to run legacy code. Playstation and Xbox run on x86 because that makes porting games from Windows more convenient.
My view, even when I was studying RISC V in grad school around 6 years ago, was that RISC is clearly superior technically and this would only become more obvious with Moore's Law dying. I think subsequent events are only confirming this view. The strongest evidence for it is that nobody would even think about making a new CISC architecture that isn't x86.
> At the moment, x86 is mainly hanging on in legacy spaces because of backward compatibility.
x86 platforms also tend to let you run your own code, and are associated with 'proper computers/proper operating systems' where you have full access to your own device.
The vast majority of non-x86 devices are of the 'locked down and dumbed-down' variety. Content consumption devices built around monopolistic App Stores and touch-centric UIs. They tend to be entirely non-upgradable and, increasingly, actively repair-resistant, too.
The market for a 'real computer' may be shrinking, but it's premature to call them 'legacy devices'.
(It'd be nice if serious ARM-based PCs became more of an option though, not just little devices like the Pi, or glued-in-battery Apple products, but fully-upgradeable replacements for a high-end x86 workstation or gaming PC)
> Playstation and Xbox run on x86 because that makes porting games from Windows more convenient.
I expect it helps a lot that AMD can easily provide competitive x86 and GPU cores in one SoC, as they’re already building similar APUs - just with smaller graphics segments?
