AMD64

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AMD's x86-64 CPU architecture is their entry into the 64-bit microprocessor market. It represents a break with AMD's past behavior of following Intel's standards, but follows Intel's earlier behavior of extending the a single architecture, first from the 8-bit 8088 to the 16-bit 8086, then from 16-bits to the 32-bit 80386 and beyond, without ever removing backwards compatibility. The x86-64 architecture extends the 32-bit x86 architecture by adding 64-bit registers, with a full 32-bit and 16-bit compatibility modes for earlier software.

This is in sharp distinction to Intel's competing Itanium architecture, which makes a complete break from Intel's x86 architecture.

There are now pre-release versions of both Linux and the Microsoft Windows operating systems available for x86-84, together with early test silicon.