[Gllug] IA32? IA64? x86...

[Matthew Thompson]

On Thursday, October 3, 2002, at 11:09 AM, Dylan wrote:

> Hi guys
>
> I'm getting a bit fuddled here...

Easily done.

> Can one of the hardware gurus explain what's what? Which processors 
> are IA32
> (i{3|4|5}86?), which IA64? Where does i686 fit in the scheme? How is 
> the
> Itanium related (if at all?)

ia32 is the instruction set for Intel 32 bit compatible processors. 
386, 486, Pentium, PPro, PII, PIII, PIV and all the AMD and Thomson etc 
clones and betters

ia64 is the instruction set for Itanium. Intel's 64bit successor to the 
PIV

x86-64 is the instruction set for AMD's Opteron and future Athlon 
processors - it's backwards compatible with ia32 which ia64 is not AND 
it offers 64bit extensions. It is currently cupported by Microsoft's 
Windows XP and Linux.

i386, i486, i586, i686 are the 386, 486, Pentium and Pentium II class 
processors from Intel.

> All I've managed to get on googling around is pages of techno-babble 
> which
> compound the fuddle!

I believe the PIV is i786 and AMD are calling the Opteron/Athlon 64 bit 
processors 8th generation - hinting at 886 :o)

M at t :o)


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug