The alliance includes a long list of other founding members, including Microsoft, Google and Meta, as well as Lenovo, the company that hosted the announcement at its Tech World 2024 conference in Bellevue, Washington. This morning's keynote featured AMD CEO Lisa Su and Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who unsurprisingly said that the x86 architecture is “alive and well.”
According to a press release, the advisory group's stated goal is to “improve the compatibility, predictability and consistency of all x86 product offerings.” The group plans to solicit input from x86 hardware and software developers and hopes to create “simplified architectural guidelines” to help standardize interfaces across AMD and Intel product lines.
That's a worthy goal, but you don't have to read between the lines too closely to see the new group as an attempt to reassure developers, customers, and (perhaps especially) investors about the security of these companies – essentially the only two manufacturers of x86 chips — do something against ARM. Integrated chips based on ARM architecture are on the rise: in the middle of last year, Apple completely switched from Intel chips to ARM-based Apple silicon, and after a decade of failed attempts, Qualcomm is finally proving that it can do good ARM chip for Windows machines.