I’m about to install Riak on a server. When I log into the server, Ubuntu gives me a greeting string that says, among other things, “x86_64”, which I take to mean an x86 chip and a 64-bit architecture.
When I look at my choices for Debian packages here, I see:
- A 64-bit version called
riak_1.0.2-1_amd64.deb - A 32-bit version called
riak_1.0.2-1_i386.deb
This makes me think:
- I can’t use the first package because it’s for AMD chips.
- I don’t see a 64-bit version for x86 chips, so I guess I have to use 32-bit?
However, my colleague tells me that the first package will work fine. He says he’s seen this before, doesn’t know why it’s named like that.
Is this conventional? If so, why is “AMD” in the name if it isn’t specifying the chip type?
More accurately, it means an instruction set, a synonym for which is also AMD64.
AMD, the company, is free to baptize the instruction sets it invents the way it likes, but as indicated on the Wikipedia page, other companies may also give different names to very similar instructions sets to avoid referring to the company.