Re: detecting i386 or x86_64 in kickstart

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Binand Sethumadhavan wrote:
On 19/02/07, Klaus Steden <klaus.steden@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Newbie-ish question... what exactly is the difference between i686 and
> x86_64? I imagine athlon is specifically for AMD 64-bit processors?
>
One short answer is that a 32-bit CPU (i386 - Pentium, Athlon, etc.) uses
32-bit addressing, while a 64-bit CPU (x86_64 - Opteron, Itanium, etc.) uses 64-bit addressing -- meaning your OS and applications can address more than 4
GB of memory at one time.


I know that much... my question was specifically about x86_64 and i686
(since I was under the impression that i686 also means a 64-bit
processor).

I imagine i686 covers a much wider range of CPUs, not all of which are 64-bit?

Trye, As does "athlon."

Similar on other architectures too, not all Sparcs, Powers, S/360 family CPUs do 64-bits. Doubtless the flags depend on atchitecture too: the flags register is an 8086 thing, S/370 uses control registers for this (and more).


--

Cheers
John

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