“Intel proposes innovative x86S architecture for purely 64-bit processing”

Company Intel came up with a proposal for an innovative architecture x86S. It would like to be purely 64-bit, unlike x86-64 (Intel 64), which has been around for over 20 years. Intel points out that Microsoft no longer ships a 32-bit version of the Windows 11 operating system, itself does not support the native running of systems that do not use UEFI64, and 64-bit architecture is the standard today. It is still possible to run 32-bit applications, but native 16-bit support has been abandoned. Still, there are plenty of places in processors to address backwards compatibility with obsolete or unnecessary routines. Such is the need to enter 64-bit mode, which is unnecessarily complicated, and Intel is thinking about whether it would be easier to enter 64-bit mode immediately and directly. These transitions are no longer justified today.

However, removing these technologies, which now run in real or protected mode, would require the creation of 64-bit equivalents. This is, for example, CPU booting, which now starts in real address mode. Next are 5-level pages that require paging to be disabled first. However, a pure 64-bit processor would simplify both software and hardware. The segmentation model would be simpler, support for 16-bit addressing and other unused technologies would be removed. On the other hand, virtualization should be used to run older systems, which should emulate the removed functions necessary for their operation.