AMD64 and lang/gcc3x on -CURRENT

[Peter Wemm]

On Wednesday 18 February 2004 12:37 am, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> > On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> >>   *** Configuration amd64-portbld-freebsd5.2 not supported
> >>   Configure in /tmp/a/ports/lang/gcc33/work/build/gcc failed,
> >> exiting. and my gut tells me someone renamed x86_64 to amd64
> >> somewhere without making proper adjustment in upstream packages or
> >> something like that.
> >
> > From things David and/or Peter have written I've gathered the
> > following:
> >
> > 1) AMD didn't give the platform an official name till fairly late
> > 2) Some folks chose amd64
> > 3) Later the muttonheads at the FSF chose x86_64
>
> And right they were.  See yesterdays press announcement by Intel.

That sequence of events isn't quite right.  AMD originally came up with 
x86-64.  When Microsoft got going on the port, they said "that name 
sucks to type, how about amd64?  We're NOT using x86=64".  And so it 
became "amd64" or AMD64.  And FWIW, I agree.  x86_64 is the worst 
possible name to type.

I suspect the x86-64 name was chosen to make it a less bitter pill for 
Intel to pick it up (after all, thats what cross licensing agreements 
are for).  However, Intel haven't chosen either of the two names.. 
They've done their own one.  "IA-32e" was mentioned several times at 
the IDF this week.

The preview winxp-64 ISO released from microsoft 2 weeks ago has got a 
hal.dll that does a strcmp for "AuthenticAMD" and "GenuineIntel".  (see 
for yourself, do a cabextract on /amd64/hal.dl_).  All over the system, 
from top to bottom, its called 'amd64' - except for the top level human 
visible stuff.  I'll be suprised if they do a global search/replace at 
this stage, especially since their last few compiler releases etc know 
thats what its called and use amd64 in their ifdefs.
-- 
Peter Wemm - peter at wemm.org; peter at FreeBSD.org; peter at yahoo-inc.com
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5