Will x86 Become a “Big Iron” Server-Only Chip?

Back in the 90s, there was a company named Tadpole that sold laptops with pretty exotic processors.  You could get a Tadpole laptop running SPARC, Alpha, or PowerPC.

This was pretty cool, because you could run Sun Solaris, OpenVMS, or IBM AIX on your laptop.  In an era before Linux came to dominate everything, running the same OS on your private computing environment (your laptop) as your server was neat and opened all kinds of possibilities for development.  Why, you could write that Netscape Web Server code while you waited at the airport!

The Tadpoles were neat…but not popular.  These laptops were heavily advertised and carved out a niche in the very small market for sales engineers who needed to demo company products at a customer’s site.  But very few developers, much less non-developers, bought them.  They were expensive.  And when I say “expensive” I meant “insanely expensive”.  A SPARCbook 3 in 1994 retailed for $10,950.  In 1994!  That’s about. $24,000 today.

But even if they’d been closer in price to the ubiquitous x86 laptop, I doubt if they would have been a huge hit.  The SPARC and Alpha processors were designed to be datacenter workhorses, converting electricity into compute as quickly as possible.  They weren’t designed for battery life.  The SPARCbooks were notorious for quickly draining the battery – often in as little as 1.5 hours.  This was compared to x86, which even then could get you 6-8 hours of time.

Devs continued to run Windows mostly, even though it was a different OS and a different chipset than the servers they pushed code too.  And this was the pre-Docker era.

In between that era and our present time, Linux has spread everywhere, and Docker has come along as well.  Today, your server is probably running x86.  And your laptop…

Will it continue to run x86?  Consider:

• Apple has been tearing up the sales charts with Apple Silicon- (and macOS-) based laptops.
• Nvidia and Microsoft are now partnering to offer Nvidia chip-based laptops.
• And even if you don’t want an Nvidia laptop, there are other ARM-based Windows systems.
• At the low-end, you have Chromebooks.
• And if you need to test code, we have Docker now.

In other words, we seem to be going back to a world where your laptop runs a different chipset than your server.  And instead of power-thirsty x86, it’s running something ARM-based, with the obvious advantage of power efficiency.

So where does that leave x86?  Who needs an x86 at home any more?  Gamers and prosumers you say.  The former certainly needs a high-end video card, but do they need an x86?  And if by prosumer you mean high-end graphics work, Apple has some lovely silicon to sell you.

It’s not hard to imagine a world where x86 ironically becomes “big iron”.  The chip that launched the IBM PC – the exact opposite of Big Iron (which in 1982 meant IBM mainframes and DEC PDPs) – has now graduated to being the datacenter heavyweight, while consumers use lightweight chips with different power/performance envelopes on their personal devices.

You might still buy an x86-based laptop in 2026.  But will you in 2036?

raindog308 is a longtime community LETizen, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, raindog308 runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, raindog308 has a life-long love of German Shepherd Dogs, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, playing guitar, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.