On Thu, 31 Aug 2017 15:42:26 -0500, Mark Lloyd
wrote:

On 08/30/2017 05:53 PM, Ken Blake wrote:

[snip]

then 80586 or 586, which became known as
Pentium (I _think_ when some judge decided to not allow numbers to be
the subject of copyright/patent suits any further), and so on. x64, in
contrast, _does_ derive from the bitwidth.


Do you know where the X in x86 and x64 comes from? I don't.


x as a wildcard. x86 = 86, 186, 286, 386, ....


That makes sense...


Still doesn't sound right for x64 though.


....but no, that doesn't. So maybe that's not the right answer.