kernel designations terminology confusion -- amd64 used for into quad core

Erik Trulsson ertr1013 at student.uu.se
Wed Aug 5 13:28:59 UTC 2009


On Wed, Aug 05, 2009 at 02:14:49PM +0100, David Southwell wrote:
> Hi every one
> 
> My understanding is that one uses the amd64 for building a kernel for systems 
> with Intel Quad Core processors.

That depends on if you installed the amd64 version of FreeBSD or the i386
version.  The kernel should of course match the rest of the system.
Intel's Quad Core processors (at least all the models they have released so
far) supports both amd64 and i386.  (i386 being 32-bit, while amd64 is
64-bit.)

> 
> It is helpful when naming conventions follow a logical strand. I mean why does 
> freebsd use a single manufacturer's name to represent a genre? 

The amd64 architecture is called that because it was AMD who invented and
created it and was for a while the only one using it and since AMD named the
architecture AMD64 that was the name FreeBSD used too.  Later Intel also
started using it (while using their own name(s) for it), but FreeBSD has
stuck with the name amd64.  This is no more strange than calling the i386
architecture for i386 even if it runs on a whole lot of processors other
than the original Intel 80386.



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


More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list