x86 architectures terminology (was Re: greater popularity of Debian on AMD64?)

[Filipus Klutiero <chealer@gmail.com>]

On 2012-09-08 20:16, Russell Coker wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Sep 2012, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh<hmh@debian.org>  wrote:
> > If "64-bit PC" is too vague, the alternative designator for the amd64 arch
> > is the vendor neutral "x86-64".  The vendor-neutral designator for all of
> > i386, i486, i586, i686, amd64 and x32 is "x86" (i.e. it is for both 32-bit
> > and 64-bit).  i286, i186 and 8086 are too old to bother with :-)
> Why should we be vendor-neutral?  AMD invented the AMD64 instruction set.
>
> Intel invented the 386 instruction set and we call it i386.
>
> Why be vendor-neutral for things that AMD invents when we aren't vendor-
> neutral for things that Intel invents?
I don't think anyone is proposing to rename amd64. Changing system names 
is rarely worth the effort.
What we're trying to find is how we should refer to these architectures 
when addressing the end-user.