# i386 / amd64



## gpatrick (Mar 7, 2013)

This is just a general question regarding i386 and amd64.  Although I don't have the download figures for each architecture, it seems that i386 is where the primary development occurs rather than amd64 which is baffling to me because almost every machine that is purchased today has a 64-bit instruction set.

I realize that amd64 is not the same as IA64 which was discontinued by Intel some years ago.  amd64 can also be called by other names such as x86_64, x64, EM64T or maybe another one or two I don't recall at the moment.

However, back to my original question, why isn't (or so it appears) the primary development done on amd64?  Or am I incorrect in my assumption on architecture development?


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## wblock@ (Mar 7, 2013)

gpatrick said:
			
		

> it seems that i386 is where the primary development occurs rather than amd64



What gives you that impression?


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## kpa (Mar 7, 2013)

Based on the discussions on the mailing lists it's completely the opposite nowadays, amd64 is the primary platform for most of the developers and i386 a secondary platform.


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## kpa (Mar 7, 2013)

That could be just information copy/pasted from the previous release notes. Amd64 is certainly a very mature platform now.


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## usdmatt (Mar 7, 2013)

amd64 is definitely the primary target platform for FreeBSD these days. Looking back through the releases, that 'young' paragraph has been there since 5.3-RELEASE when it first appeared in the notes - 10 years ago. While there probably are still some third party apps that don't like 64bit, it's probably time for that to get rewritten or removed.

The length of the amd64/i386 sections isn't really a good indicator either. The processor list in the amd64 section covers pretty much every 64bit intel/amd processor (if not all of them). The i386 section also covers a few things that probably apply to both (SMP/HTT/laptop support/ACPI), and PAE which is irrelevant in amd64.


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## sossego (Mar 7, 2013)

One has more letters- AMD64- and the other has more numbers- i386.


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## Terry_Kennedy (Mar 7, 2013)

gpatrick said:
			
		

> IA64 which was discontinued by Intel some years ago.


Intel still sells (a few) and develops (slowly) Itanium processors. That processor family never lived up to its hype / sales forecasts, though. The majority of those CPUs go into systems from HP, which has a number of legacy environments (HP-UX, NonStop, and VMS). Being legacy environments, HP can charge a heft premium for that hardware / software.


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## Crivens (Mar 7, 2013)

Terry_Kennedy said:
			
		

> Intel still sells (a few) and develops (slowly) Itanium processors. That processor family never lived up to its hype / sales forecasts, though. The majority of those CPUs go into systems from HP, which has a number of legacy environments (HP-UX, NonStop, and VMS). Being legacy environments, HP can charge a heft premium for that hardware / software.



When you hear how the itanium came to be, you might want to bang your head into a wall.

According to one ex-Intel designer, one guy hand-wrote one loop of the SPEC benchmarks (on paper) in the itanium assembler and from a calculation based on that "determinated" the performance in all other spec benchmarks. No emulator was written, no cross compile done to check it in more detail. He sold it to the management. Management liked it, and the rest is history.

edit: Will check if I can find that recording on the 'tube.
edit2: here it is. Have fun.


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## rstone@ (Mar 9, 2013)

usdmatt said:
			
		

> amd64 is definitely the primary target platform for FreeBSD these days. Looking back through the releases, that 'young' paragraph has been there since 5.3-RELEASE when it first appeared in the notes - 10 years ago. While there probably are still some third party apps that don't like 64bit, it's probably time for that to get rewritten or removed.


Agreed.  I have contacted the release engineering team.  Hopefully that sentence will be removed for subsequent releases -- it's definitely long-since out-of-date.


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## usdmatt (Mar 29, 2013)

http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=248857


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## throAU (Mar 29, 2013)

Crivens said:
			
		

> When you hear how the itanium came to be, you might want to bang your head into a wall.
> 
> According to one ex-Intel designer, one guy hand-wrote one loop of the SPEC benchmarks (on paper) in the itanium assembler and from a calculation based on that "determinated" the performance in all other spec benchmarks. No emulator was written, no cross compile done to check it in more detail. He sold it to the management. Management liked it, and the rest is history.
> 
> ...



Actually, depending on how you view "success" itanium was a massive success.

If you measure success in terms of eliminating competitors... the vapor killed all of the competing CPU designed from HP and everyone else, and in the mean-time x64 caught up performance wise.


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## kpa (Mar 29, 2013)

Is powerpc64 still alive in any form?


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## Crivens (Mar 30, 2013)

Yes it is, check out freescale.com for details. I would _love_ to have that architecture back under my desk.


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