Andy Green wrote: > This is a great question... everybody just assumes everybody knows. > > i386, i486, all the Penium *s are 32-bit > > AMD's Athlon 64 and Opteron, and Intel's Itanium are 64-bit Um. You've been missing something. Intel's Itanium turned out to be ... only suitable for specialised, high end markets. AMD's 64 bit extensions proved to be popular enough that Intel was forced to adopt them, although corporate "Not Invented Here" means they've never officially called them AMD64 or x86-64. http://kerneltrap.org/node/2466 Intel won't always even admit that the extensions make the Pentium 4 a real 64 bit chip: they're currently described on http://intel.com/products/processor/pentium4/index.htm as: Intel® Extended Memory 64 TechnologyΦ (Intel® EM64T) can improve performance by allowing the system to address more than 4 GB of both virtual and physical memory. Intel EM64T also provides support for 64 bit computing to help handle the applications of tomorrow. -- E-mail address: james | "Now I've got the bead on you with MY disintegrating @westexe.demon.co.uk | gun. And when it disintegrates, it disintegrates. | (pulls trigger) Well, what you do know, | it disintegrated." -- Daffy Duck
