Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 18:37:56 -0700 From: David Schultz <das@FreeBSD.ORG> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Peeve: why "i386"? Message-ID: <20030608013756.GA89985@HAL9000.homeunix.com> In-Reply-To: <20030605165217.A388@online.fr> References: <20030605165217.A388@online.fr>
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On Thu, Jun 05, 2003, Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Why do all the BSDs continue to refer to the 32 bit Intel architecture > as i386 even when they typically won't even install on an i386 any > more? Why not call it x86, or ia32, if not in the kernel config then > at least in the release notes and documentation, as everyone else has > been doing for years? > > I personally find "i386" ugly and antiquated-sounding; many people > find it confusing and misleading. (Yes I know it's come up on the > lists before. I haven't seen any good answers though, "for historical > reasons" isn't a good answer.) The reasons for keeping with the i386 name have little to do with tradition, as some people have implied. i386 is the name of the *architecture*. The Intel 80386 was the first processor to implement that architecture, and the latest Pentium 4 also implements the architecture, albeit with a number of enhancements over the previous generation. The term IA-32 didn't come along until a few years ago. (1994 was when Intel first started work on the design of the Itanium, and the marketing people didn't fiddle around with the naming until a few years after that.) So here is a concise list of what I believe are the real reasons we don't use something else: - ``i386'' is correct, as explained above. - Others use it too, including (I think) Solaris, which doesn't support anything earlier than a Pentium. IIRC, the same is true of Linux. - Changing things now would be a major PITA, taking hours of repo-surgery and scads of patches. There's no good reason to do this. The fact that you personally find the term ``Ugly and antiquated sounding'' certainly isn't a justification, although I respect your opinion on the matter. If people want the documentation to say ``x86'' or ``IA-32'', that's another matter, but I would suggest that the documentation remain consistent with the code insofar as there is the potential for confusion.
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