Erlang is a concurrent functional language, tailored for large-scale distributed and fault-tolerant control software. Its primary implementation is Ericsson’s Erlang/OTP system, which is based on a virtual machine interpreter. HiPE (High-Performance Erlang) adds a native code execution mode to the Erlang/OTP system. This paper describes the x86 version of HiPE, including a detailed account of decisions and principles that guide the design of its compiler and runtime system. We also present a brief performance evaluation which indicates that HiPE/x86 delivers performance improvements on par with the more mature HiPE/SPARC system.