short answer to technical question?

[James Wilkinson]

Andy Green wrote:
> This is a great question... everybody just assumes everybody knows.
> 
> i386, i486, all the Penium *s are 32-bit
> 
> AMD's Athlon 64 and Opteron, and Intel's Itanium are 64-bit

Um. You've been missing something. Intel's Itanium turned out to be ...
only suitable for specialised, high end markets. AMD's 64 bit extensions
proved to be popular enough that Intel was forced to adopt them,
although corporate "Not Invented Here" means they've never officially
called them AMD64 or x86-64.
http://kerneltrap.org/node/2466

Intel won't always even admit that the extensions make the Pentium 4 a
real 64 bit chip: they're currently described on
http://intel.com/products/processor/pentium4/index.htm as:

    Intel® Extended Memory 64 TechnologyΦ (Intel® EM64T) can improve
    performance by allowing the system to address more than 4 GB of both
    virtual and physical memory. Intel EM64T also provides support for
    64 bit computing to help handle the applications of tomorrow.

-- 
E-mail address: james | "Now I've got the bead on you with MY disintegrating
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                      | (pulls trigger)  Well, what you do know,
                      | it disintegrated."  -- Daffy Duck