Why Did Intel x86 Beat RISC Processors in the 1990s?

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RISC workstations from companies such as Sun, Silicon Graphics, HP, and Acorn battled Intel in the 90s and lost. Will the same happen with Arm and RISC-V?

onezero.medium.com, Apr. 02, 2022 – 

Whenever I write about the ascent of modern RISC processors such as Arm and RISC-V, I always get comments about how RISC processors failed to take on Intel in the past and that they are doomed to fail again.

It is true that there was a battle between RISC and CISC processors in the 1990s. At the time workstations from companies such as Sun, Silicon Graphics and Acorn were hot stuff. Computers magazines had lots of stories about them. I remember going to conferences back then and seeing mostly Unix workstations rather than Windows machines. However, within a relatively few years these Unix workstations were pretty much all gone.

The question people cannot stop asking is: Why would history not repeat itself? Will x86 not always end up victorious in the end?

To understand why this will not happen this time around, we need to understand why RISC workstations lost back in the day and why then everything will be different this time around.

Intel's Volume Advantage in the 90s

Production volume matters a lot when it comes to the cost of chips. Large and advanced independent chip manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which makes chips for Apple and many others today, did not exist in the 90s.

The one who had the most advanced manufacturing capability and the highest volume was Intel. RISC processors at the time were cheaper to design as they were simpler. However, lower volume meant higher unit prices.

Intel had the opposite situation. They had much higher design costs as the x86 instruction set made chips harder to design. However, due to their volume, they could produce chips at a lower cost per unit.

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