Hi,

Please pardon me for this stupid question, but this is regarding a
confusion I have developed regarding the architectures as listed in
arch/ directory:

1) i386 - I understand this is the most commonly used intel IA32
architecture to which all the pentiums, xeons, and 386, 486 etc
belong. It also covers the AMD (and other manufacturers') x86 based
processors. Is this right?

2) ia64 - This is for the intel 64 bit processors (Itanium).
Additionaly, it also covers AMD and other manufacturers' 64 bit
processors. Correct?

3) x86_64 - What is this?

Secondly, when we talk of 32/64 bit processor, we are talking about
the data bus width, right? The same holds when we talk about Operating
systems, right? So the size of address bus does not matter?

TIA,

Rick
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On 3/20/07, Rick Brown <rick.brown.3 [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) i386 - I understand this is the most commonly used intel IA32
> architecture to which all the pentiums, xeons, and 386, 486 etc
> belong. It also covers the AMD (and other manufacturers') x86 based
> processors. Is this right?

yes

> 2) ia64 - This is for the intel 64 bit processors (Itanium).
> Additionaly, it also covers AMD and other manufacturers' 64 bit
> processors. Correct?

no ... this is the itanium only, this is not the AMD64/EM64T stuff

> 3) x86_64 - What is this?

amd64/em64t

> Secondly, when we talk of 32/64 bit processor, we are talking about
> the data bus width, right? The same holds when we talk about Operating
> systems, right? So the size of address bus does not matter?

it usually refers to the native size of the cpu ... 64bit processors
work normally on registers that are 64bits in size while 32bit
processors work normally on registers that are 32bits in size
-mike
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>
> > Secondly, when we talk of 32/64 bit processor, we are talking about
> > the data bus width, right? The same holds when we talk about Operating
> > systems, right? So the size of address bus does not matter?
>
> it usually refers to the native size of the cpu ... 64bit processors
> work normally on registers that are 64bits in size while 32bit
> processors work normally on registers that are 32bits in size
> -mike



Yes, it is the data bus width. Size of the address bus does not matter. On
i386, they are same by design not by requirement. On x86_64, they are
different.

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<div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">> Secondly, when we talk of 32/64 bit processor, we are talking about<br>> the data bus width, right? The same holds when we talk about Operating
<br>> systems, right? So the size of address bus does not matter?<br><br>it usually refers to the native size of the cpu ... 64bit processors<br>work normally on registers that are 64bits in size while 32bit<br>processors work normally on registers that are 32bits in size
<br>-mike</blockquote><div><br><br>Yes, it is the data bus width. Size of the address bus does not matter. On i386, they are same by design not by requirement. On x86_64, they are different.<br></div><br></div>

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On 20/03/07, Mike Frysinger <vapier.adi [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/20/07, Rick Brown <rick.brown.3 [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> > Secondly, when we talk of 32/64 bit processor, we are talking about
> > the data bus width, right? The same holds when we talk about Operating
> > systems, right? So the size of address bus does not matter?
>
> it usually refers to the native size of the cpu ... 64bit processors
> work normally on registers that are 64bits in size while 32bit
> processors work normally on registers that are 32bits in size
> -mike
>

I agree that that's usually what people understand by 32/64 bit
processors, but the whole thing is loosing meaning.
AMD64/EM64T processors also have 128bit registers for the MMX/SSE
stuff, and what about the x87 stuff, that uses 80bit registers, and
when talking about how much memory the processor can address the
Opteron has 40-bit physical and 48-bit virtual addressing and if I
remember correct EM64T processors support only 36bit addresses.
So it's all a little blurry...

--
Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl [at] gmail.com>
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