Despite its aging design, the x86 is still in charge

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Virtual Machines

I can see a few ways that we can move away from the x86 legacy.

1) Movement of software to architecture independent languages - i.e. Java, or browser delivered frontends written in JavaScript or Flash. These are all making heavy use of a high level VM.
2) Software emulation of old CPU / hardware - regularly used to provide emulators for old 8 and 16-bit machines, and to run PowerPC software on Intel Macs. As a rule of thumb, a modern machine can do a reasonable emulation of anything 5 years before, so you would need a 5 year lead time to switch.
3) LLVM - or low-level virtual machine - the idea here is that you compile programs down to the LLVM, not the CPU, which keeps them portable. It's a similar idea to Java and the Java VM, except we're talking compiling standard legacy C/C++ down to a VM.

Couple of other points - only a tiny percentage of software is actually written in low-level languages. Most software is written in languages that can be compiled for multiple CPU architectures - it's more the dependency on the Windows class library that keeps it x86.

It's also worth noting that the ARM instruction set is more popular on portable devices, which could well end up a bigger market than desktop software.

Posted by: JulesLt   Posted on: 04/04/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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