detecting i386 or x86_64 in kickstart

[John Summerfield]

Binand Sethumadhavan wrote:
> On 19/02/07, Klaus Steden <klaus.steden at thomson.net> 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

-- spambait
1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu  Z1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu

Please do not reply off-list