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HishamMuhammad writes "The rumors reported earlier at /. are confirmed. The latest offerings in the Pentium 4 family now support AMD's x86-64 architecture, even though Intel is not willing to admit it very openly, by using cryptic names like EM64T and (gasp) IA-32e. (The naming issue was discussed on lkml, and the consensus there was to use 'x86-64,' even though sometimes AMD refers to it as 'AMD64'). Intel's FAQ admits their implementation is basically compatible with x86-64, except for the minor differences that have always set Athlons and P4s apart. It's about time Intel jumped on AMD's bandwagon, since its homegrown 64-bit architecture seems not to be doing very well."

An anonymous reader writes "The boys at Intel can't be happy with the latest opposition to the IA-64 instruction set. According to this Inquirer scoop, Linus himself has weighed in, and it appears he's putting his eggs in the x86-64 basket. In the original usenet post, he goes so far as to say that 'We're ... praying that AMD's x86-64 succeeds in the market, forcing Intel to make Yamhill their standard platform.'"

fvdl writes: "Last week, a port of NetBSD to the x86-64 (tm) architecture was committed to the NetBSD CVS repository. The x86-64 is AMD's upcoming 64bit line of CPUs. For now, it is only known to work on the Virtutech simulator, since no x86-64 hardware is available yet. In this environment, it runs multi-user. NetBSD/x86_64 is the 44th architecture that NetBSD runs on (12 different families of CPUs). The porting was done by Frank van der Linden of Wasabi Systems, with kind support from AMD, who provided the simulator and fast machines on which ro run it. The Wasabi press release is here. For more information on the x86-64, see of course AMD's website and x86-64.org"

Well, as the title says - the AMD X86-64 simulator is shipping (for Linux only - for now). You can go here and read the details. It is called SimNow!. Unfortunately, the kernel 64 bit port is not done yet, but hey, you got a nice simulated machine to play with! It's available as RPM for RedHat 6.2 and SuSE 6.4. NOTE: - you'll need PLENTY of RAM to operate this simulator! (384MB RAM is minimum) and disk space - 4 GB! So think before you download this beast!

-|Oblom|- writes "AMD has partnered with SUSE to port Linux to its upcoming 64-bit Sledgehammer chip. The story is on CNET and the projects site is here www.x86-64.org Well... I have been waiting for a while for this announcment. Hopefully by the end of next year I'll be running dual-core 1.5Ghz(at least) Sledgehammer with Linux on it"

-|Oblom|- writes "AMD has partnered with SUSE to port Linux to its upcoming 64-bit Sledgehammer chip. The story is on CNET and the projects site is here www.x86-64.org Well... I have been waiting for a while for this announcment. Hopefully by the end of next year I'll be running dual-core 1.5Ghz(at least) Sledgehammer with Linux on it"