asian1 wrote:
25 years ago, IBM released the first IBM PC with 16 bit 8088 CPU (x86).
On a forum there is a prediction on future CPU that x86 instruction set/applications will survive into 2030. Will the same thing happen with PowerPC instruction set/applications?
I doubt the PPC will be arround by then. ARM and MIPS are better suited to embedded applications, Once the current generation of PPC chips have reache the end of thier usefull life and made enough money back they will probably be quietly dropped... The only thing keeping the PPC alive is the fact that IBM and Freescale can use the ISA royalty free (now that implementations of ISA can be patented, read up about MIPS and their byteswap instruction!!!)
"Regardless of whether it's quantum, light, or whatever doesn't have anything to do with whether it's x86 or not. I'd say yes, 24 years from now we'll still be using x86. Our dependency on it has simply grown too large to get away from it. However, it's not as though this is all bad. Modern x86 CPUs have very little in common with the original 8088, the true "x86" part is almost completely gone. Old x86 code is now translated into the CPU's native languange, then processed. This allows future CPUs to continue to move more and more towards a RISC based system, while still supporting the CISC x86 codebase, through translations."
Well it's gone further than that now... as of next month all the major x86 vendors will switch over to x86-64 (AMD64, EMT64, whatever), which although derived from the original x86 set, is actually a new architecture. After a period of time, I doubt CPUs will support the x86 instruction set at all! :-o
