[haunter]

If you mean amd64 it's the 64 bit extension of the x86 instruction set. It's just named after AMD because they were the ones introducing it while Intel was instead working on the arguably failed brand new 64 bit-only Itanium architecture. In the end they "went back" and picked up amd64 too that's why multiple names exist: x64, x86_64, amd64.

[ghaff]

And there were/are some differences between AMD and Intel 64-bit x86 once you get into the details (and indeed between various extensions on a given microarchitecture). x86_64 (or x86-64), ugly as it is, is probably the best way to refer to specifically 64-bit x86 at a non-vendor-specific level. Just x86 works for a lot of purposes too.

[unixgoddess]

thanks, TIL