> I think it'll be the dominant architecture for at least 10 more years.
That needs to be qualified as "for desktops/servers" or similar. x86 haven't been the dominant architecture for at least a decade, if ever, in terms of units shipped. It's being outsold in number of units by ARM at a 10:1 ratio, and MIPS and PPC's are shipped in higher volume as well, or at least did as of a year or two ago. Possibly even 6502 and various micro-controllers, though getting numbers is harder.
Keep in mind how many CPU's are around you. Our servers have an ARM core per harddrive, and several of our RAID controllers have multiple PPC cores, for example. We have some servers with dozens of non-x86 CPUs per x86 CPU. Even some SD cards have ARM cores on them.
Now consider your car, microwave, washing machine, dish washer, tv, set-top box, phones, camera, music player, digital radio. A lot of stuff that was semi-mechanical or employed discrete logic a few years back now have CPUs that are ridiculous overkill, but used because they're so cheap there's no reason not to.
x86 is a diminishing niche if you look at electronics as a whole.
That needs to be qualified as "for desktops/servers" or similar. x86 haven't been the dominant architecture for at least a decade, if ever, in terms of units shipped. It's being outsold in number of units by ARM at a 10:1 ratio, and MIPS and PPC's are shipped in higher volume as well, or at least did as of a year or two ago. Possibly even 6502 and various micro-controllers, though getting numbers is harder.
Keep in mind how many CPU's are around you. Our servers have an ARM core per harddrive, and several of our RAID controllers have multiple PPC cores, for example. We have some servers with dozens of non-x86 CPUs per x86 CPU. Even some SD cards have ARM cores on them.
Now consider your car, microwave, washing machine, dish washer, tv, set-top box, phones, camera, music player, digital radio. A lot of stuff that was semi-mechanical or employed discrete logic a few years back now have CPUs that are ridiculous overkill, but used because they're so cheap there's no reason not to.
x86 is a diminishing niche if you look at electronics as a whole.