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

[Mel Flynn]

On Wednesday 05 August 2009 05:27:55 Erik Trulsson wrote:

> 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 isn't completely correct. There is actually an ia64 architecture, before 
Intel was ready to give up the "who dictates the PC 64bit architecture" 
battle. There's a handful of CPU's who use that instruction set, but later 
Intel switched to supporting AMD's instruction set and thus the PC 64 bit 
architecture now is amd64.

It'll be fun to see people asking in a few years why Oracle processors are 
called "sparc64"...
-- 
Mel