x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)

[Jon Masters]

On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 16:19 -0600, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, Jon Masters <jonathan at jonmasters.org> said:
> > Indeed. Paul, take a look at the Intel 64 ISA and you'll see it's a very
> > different beast. Intel fixed a lot of the issues with the (more than 20
> > year old really x86 ISA)
> 
> That would be AMD that fixed it, not Intel.  Intel tried to push
> everybody to a new architecture (Itanium), while AMD revised and
> extended i386 to 64 bits.  After Itanium failed to catch on in the
> marketplace, Intel had to copy AMD's work.

That's presumptuous and unfair. Sure, without AMD and others we'd likely
be on Itanium (which I actually quite like as an architecture) but Intel
64 isn't just some copy-and-paste effort either. Besides, whatever the
history we shouldn't be encouraging people to use plain older x86.

Jon.