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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2882 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 18, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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AMD64 (as if that tells you anything about the instruction set)

Was there a second 64-bit instruction set invented by AMD?

I was being imprecise here, and I do not have all that extensive of knowledge of the landscape of instruction sets and architectures out in the wild.

That being said. If you already know what you want, AMD64 is unambiguous and interchangeable with x86-64. As a name it is less legibly part of the x86 lineage than e.g. 8086, iAPX 286, i386, etc.

I am not aware of a second 64-bit instruction set invented by AMD. It is plausible there exists some highly specialized instruction set out in the wild invented by AMD that is 64-bit, but no one would reasonably assume you were talking about that if you referenced AMD64. AMD the manufacturer does or has produce other 64-bit instruction set processors e.g. the AMD Opteron A1100, which uses the ARMv8-A instruction set.

Yeah, that last bit is a more common point of confusion than you might expect for normies: Linux software supporting both AARCH64 and x86-64 took off for single-board computer support, and a surprising number of people saw AMD64 and thought it meant the former.

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