cvs commit: www/en index.xsl

[Ruslan Ermilov]

On Mon, Sep 20, 2004 at 05:53:18PM -0400, John Baldwin wrote:
> On Monday 20 September 2004 05:18 pm, David O'Brien wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 05:41:26AM +0900, Hiroki Sato wrote:
> > > "David E. O'Brien" <obrien at FreeBSD.org> wrote
> > > obrien>   Log:
> > > obrien>   Use consistent wording.
> >
> > ..
> >
> > > -		x86 compatible, AMD64 and Intel EM64T, Alpha, IA-64, PC-98
> > > +		x86 compatible, AMD64 compatible, Alpha, IA-64, PC-98
> >
> > ..
> >
> > >  I would like to make it clear that FreeBSD supports EM64T
> > >  by using the Intel's architecture name because the word
> > >  AMD64 can confuse the users.  Is that unacceptable?
> >
> > If I can list AMD Athlon, AMD K6, AMD K5, VIA, Cyrix, Transmeta, National
> > Semiconductor, IBM, etc... in the list rather than "x86 compatible".  For
> > Alpha we would need to add Samsung, who also made some Alpha dirivitives.
> > For Sparc64 we would need to add Fujitsu.
> > Where does it stop?
> >
> > People owning Intel EM64T machines well know that it is a copy of the
> > AMD64 platform.
> 
> x86 doesn't say Intel in the name, whereas amd64 does have AMD in its name.  
> Maybe if we just called it 'x86-64 compatible' rather than 'amd64 
> compatible'?
> 
Calling it "x86-64 compatible" would be plain wrong, this is a former name
of the AMD's 64-bit architecture.  This is explained in "AMD64 ABI" document
on www.amd64.org (also available at www.x86-64.org).

Technically, they two different architectures, AMD's AMD64 (formerly
known as x86-64) and Intel's EM64T (formerly known as IA-32e).

While other x86 vendors call their products "x86 or IA-32 compatible",
Intel's EM64T doesn't claim any compatibility to AMD64: "Intel EM64T
is an enhancement to Intel IA-32 architecture".  Simply searching for
"AMD64" on www.intel.com returns nothing.  ;)

While AMD64 and EM64T seem to be compatible at the moment, can anyone
be certain this will hold forever?  Neither AMD nor Intel claim any
compatibility to each other.

Saying only "AMD64 compatible", like David did, would be politically
correct (now), recognizing the AMD's lead, while saying "AMD64 and
Intel EM64T compatible" would be more technically correct and convenient
for our users.  Do we care about politics or our users?

Mentioning both architectures would also be consistent with our own
AMD64 architecture page, http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/amd64.html,
and the architecture list on the left of the main web page that says
"AMD64/EM64T".

I'm for technical correctness, "AMD64 and Intel EM64T compatible".
Technically, they are two different architectures, compatible at
the moment.


Cheers,
-- 
Ruslan Ermilov
ru at FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD committer
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