Would x86-s Kill Emulation?

Nathon Dalton · June 4, 2023

Summary

Intel is proposing a new version of the x86 architecture called x86-s (x86 Simplified) in which 16-bit and 32-bit modes are eliminated along with their many of their associated compatibilities.

Proposed Architecture

Supported and Unsupported Modes

My thoughts

I'm wondering if this would mean the end of emulation of previous architectures. The article mentions this.

"While running a legacy 64-bit operating system on top of a 64-bit mode-only architecture CPU is not an explicit goal of this effort, the Intel architecture software ecosystem has sufficiently matured with virtualization products so that a virtualization-based software solution could use virtualization hardware (VMX) to deliver a solution to emulate features required to boot legacy operating systems."

However, that doesn't seem clear to me with respect to earlier 32-bit and 16-bit emulation.

Sources

jaslion · June 4, 2023

Considering how incredibly much stuff even today still needs 16bit instructions to function id not worry about this for a loooooong time

That and emulation layers exist already

Needfuldoer · June 4, 2023

How would it kill emulation? Sounds like emulation would be more necessary than ever for backwards-compatibility by that point.

Back in the 90s, Apple moved from the Motorola 68k architecture to PowerPC almost seamlessly through emulation. (Most of the OS was still 68k code for years after that; they shipped with just the bare essentials ported to PowerPC native code.)

Nathon Dalton · June 4, 2023

Sorry for the dumb question. I've never worked on the software for emulators before and don't know their dependency on underlying hardware. I wasn't sure if they depended on legacy CPU modes for their functionality or whether it was entirely virtualized within long mode. Thank you for the answers!