
SEATTLE — Chip-making rivals Intel Corp. and AMD Inc. finally agree on something: They’re among the founding members of x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group, a consortium designed to push forward the ecosystem around x86 processors.
“(AMD Chief Executive) Lisa (Su) and Pat finally agree on something — the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group,” Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger joked Tuesday at Lenovo’s Tech World 2024 conference here, where he spoke briefly. “Who would have thunk it?”
The surprise move by the internecine enemies is being interpreted by some industry experts as a defensive move by AMD and Intel to protect their marketing turf against the likes of ARM and Qualcomm Inc. In this case, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. But what is most surprising is that Microsoft Corp., which has paid scant attention to x86, is a founding member of the consortium while Amazon.com Inc. and NVIDIA Corp. are not.
But common business interests bely fierce competition. For more than four decades, x86 has been a bedrock of modern computing, and established as the de facto architecture in personal computers and data centers globally. The consortium is considered critical for its continued development during the fast-paced AI era.
“There’s a moment where architecturally things coming together to drive the future of the industry; it’s important and you can clearly see it when you’ve got these two companies,” Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group, said in an exclusive interview with Su and Gelsinger.
“We are on the cusp of one of the most significant changes in the x86 architecture and ecosystem in decades – with a new level of customization, compatibility and scalability required to meet current and future customer demands,” Gelsinger said in a separate statement. “We proudly stand alongside AMD and the founding members of the Advisory Group as we drive the future of computing.”
Su appeared a few minutes after Gelsinger at the Lenovo conference and also gave her blessing to the group. Their companies intend to standardize their respective x86 implementations on a “more unified set of instructions and architectural interfaces.”
“Establishing the x86 Ecosystem Advisory Group will ensure that the x86 architecture continues evolving as the compute platform of choice for both developers and customers,” Su said in a statement. “We are excited to bring the industry together to provide direction on future architectural enhancements and extend the incredible success of x86 for decades to come.”
Besides the chipmakers and Microsoft, the group is backed by Broadcom Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., HP Inc., Lenovo, Meta Platforms Inc., Oracle Corp. and IBM Corp.’s Red Hat unit. Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Epic Games Inc. CEO Tim Sweeney round out the participants.