64-bits platform question

[Erik Trulsson]

On Wed, Feb 21, 2007 at 02:35:58PM -0500, Aard Nerd wrote:
> Hi list, as far as I know Intel 64 architecture (formerly known as Intel 
> Extended Memory 64 Technology, or Intel EM64T) enables 64-bit computing on 
> desktop when combined with supporting software. If I am right, 64-bit 
> computing (on Intel architecture) requires a computer system with a 
> processor, chipset, BIOS, operating system, device drivers and applications 
> enabled for Intel EM64T architecture. So I bought an ASUS P4P800-VM with a 
> 3.0GHz processor that supports Intel EM64T and 1Gb of Infineon PC3200 RAM 
> memory. The system is ok...so why I can't install BSD 64 bits with my 
> system ???
> 
> Any clues, thanks in advance.

Intel has two 64-bit architectures - you probably downloaded the disk for
the wrong one.  On one hand they have the IA64 architecture which they
originally intended to be the successor to the IA32 (aka x86 or i386) architecture.
IA64 never became very popular however.

AMD created their own 64 bit architecture -  AMD64 (aka x86-64) which had
the big advantage of being backwards compatible with the x86 architecture.

Eventually Intel too started to implement chips around the AMD64
architecture - except they called it EM64T.


FreeBSD supports both the ia64 and amd64 architectures.  Unless you have a
computer with an Itanium or Itanium 2 CPU (which you do not have) you want
to install the amd64 version of FreeBSD and not ia64. (Or the i386 version since that
will also work fine, albeit only in 32-bit mode.)



-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013 at student.uu.se