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Re: Architecture Nomenclature



On Tue, Apr 27, 2010 at 12:45:30PM -0700, Kip Warner wrote:
> Greetings Everyone,
> 
> I've been looking for a while, but no luck. Is there a table somewhere
> that summarizes the different architecture names like i386, i586, i686,
> amd64, ia64, and so on along with the criteria for hardware qualifying
> under that name?

Are you asking about the Debian package architecture or the output of
uname?  Debian does not use i586 and i686 for package architectures, and
i386 really means i486 or above (for reasons I won't get into here).
amd64 machines need to support the lm and nx attributes in
/proc/cpuinfo.  ia64 processors support a different architecture known
as Itanium.

> e.g. Does i686 mandate SSE2?

As far as uname, not all machines that output i686 will support SSE2.
Your assumption should be that i686 == Pentium Pro, with the caveat that
not all i686 machines support cmov (some Via chips do not).  There are
special directories on some (Debian) architectures, such as i386, in
which you can place binaries built for, say, i686.  The linker will
automatically use them if the processor supports it and will ignore them
otherwise.  This allows significant performance improvements where this
matters.  This is how libc6-i686 works.

-- 
brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US
+1 832 623 2791 | http://www.crustytoothpaste.net/~bmc | My opinion only
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