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Re: [ping] Re: proper name of i386/x86-64/etc targets
- From: "H.J. Lu" <hjl dot tools at gmail dot com>
- To: Michael Matz <matz at suse dot de>
- Cc: Sandra Loosemore <sandra at codesourcery dot com>, Richard Henderson <rth at redhat dot com>, Jan Hubicka <hubicka at ucw dot cz>, Uros Bizjak <ubizjak at gmail dot com>, GCC Development <gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org>
- Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 06:12:15 -0800
- Subject: Re: [ping] Re: proper name of i386/x86-64/etc targets
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <54A5E698 dot 60702 at codesourcery dot com> <54BDBCF0 dot 9050801 at codesourcery dot com> <alpine dot LNX dot 2 dot 00 dot 1501201501140 dot 681 at wotan dot suse dot de>
On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 6:07 AM, Michael Matz <matz@suse.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 19 Jan 2015, Sandra Loosemore wrote:
>
>> > I'd be happy to work on a patch to bring the manual to using a common
>> > naming convention, but what should it be? Wikipedia seems to use
>> > "x86" (lowercase) to refer to the entire family of architectures
>> > (including the original 16-bit variants), "IA-32" for the 32-bit
>> > architecture (I believe that is Intel's official name), and "x86-64"
>> > (with a dash instead of underscore) for the 64-bit architecture. But
>> > of course the target maintainers should have the final say on what
>> > names to use.
>>
>> Ping? Any thoughts?
>
> ia32 is confusing because ia64 (a well known term) sounds related but
> can't be farther away from it, and it's also vendor specific. Our
> traditional i386 seems better to me (although it has its own problems, but
> I'm not aware of any better abbreviation in the wild that's vendor neutral
> and specifically means the 32bit incarnation of the x86 architecture).
>
The problem with i386 is it is a real processor. When someone says i386,
it isn't clear if it means the processor or 32-bit x86.
--
H.J.