Solved Misunderstanding i386 (was: boot0cfg(8) applicability)

Is my AMD64 machine also an i386 machine?

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grahamperrin said:
Is my AMD64 machine also an i386 machine?
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AMD64 are 64 bit extensions to the original 32 bit i386 instruction set. That's one of the reasons why a 64 bit AMD64 CPU is able to run 32 bit i386 instruction code. Compare that for example with the IA-64 architecture of the Intel Itanium, which is not compatible with IA-32 and cannot run 32 bit i386 code.

en.wikipedia.org

x86-64 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
Thanks. I probably confused myself after seeing "x86-specific" at <https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/faq/#bootmanager-restore>.

I often look to Wikipedia (now looking at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86>) but I had to stop myself the other day, because whenever I see "86" I think first of the drop to Tier 2, which does not apply to me. It's one of those dyslexic things that I'll find difficult to unlearn. Incidentally, did I become a Daemon at the 1,000 posts mark? Today's one of those days when I feel less than smart :)
 
Yeah, it's a little confusing but most of the time when people talk about i386 based systems they're often referring to the entire line of personal computers that started with the venerable IBM Personal computer and the XT (those were 16 bit though). But it can also refer to the IA-32 instruction set, the 80386 was the first 32 bit CPU of the whole x86 line of CPUs. This includes the latest Intel i9 Core, Xeons and AMD's Ryzen CPUs, as they're all IA-32 compatible.

grahamperrin said:
Incidentally, did I become a Daemon at the 1,000 posts mark?
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Yep. Congrats. On your way to become a "Son of Beastie" (2500 posts) :)
 
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