Intel abandons its plans to develop a lighter x86S architecture. It continues to rely on x86 and has to work with its biggest competitor there.

Intel has eliminated x86S, a variant of the x86 architecture for lighter systems. The company hasn’t officially announced this anywhere, but it was confirmed to Tom’s Hardware. Intel remains focused on further expanding the x86 ecosystem, it added.

x86S was intended for 64-bit systems and was intended to “offload” x86. The variant never really caught on. Intel released a draft x86S spec in May 2023 and revised it last summer, but it never got any further.

friend and enemy

Intel assures that the discontinuation of x86S will have no impact on further development of x86. The chip giant remains committed to the ecosystem. They are working on this together with its biggest competitor AMD. Both parties recently formed a historic partnership to ensure the future of x86, also involving parties such as Google, Lenovo, HP, Microsoft, Dell, Red Hat, Oracle and Broadcom.

The x86S initiative was a one-sided project by Intel. Now that it’s bringing together the big boys of the tech world around x86, it’s counterintuitive for Intel to play alone. It is therefore not surprising that x86S is shelved. Intel has plenty of other cats to whip.

x86 has been the dominant chip architecture in the PC and server world for decades, but there is no guarantee that this will continue to be the case in the future. ARM is on the rise in both sectors and, despite the feud between Arm and Qualcomm, has some strong advantages over x86. Intel and AMD are aware that they must do their best to demonstrate the relevance and future-proofing of the x86 architecture.