If anyone is wondering: With X64 the author is referring to x86_64 a.k.a. AMD64. Wondering why they're introducing yet another name for the same thing.
Which also means that if you've been dealing with anything referencing build matricies in Visual Studio, you've been using "x64" too. Perhaps exclusively.
I wouldn’t say that they’re introducing it, I see x64 used to refer to 64-bit x86 in a lot of places. If you don’t like it or think it’s technically wrong for some reason that’s one thing, but you’ll be fighting an uphill battle if you want it to go away.
It was called AMD64 when AMD and Microsoft designed it, but Intel objected using the term when they adopted the architecture and coined their own: EM64T. So, Microsoft came up with a compromise and started calling it x64.
Yes, but that doesn't contradict with what I said. AMD had pivoted to "AMD64" soon after and that was before Intel had released their own name: EM64T. Microsoft coined x64 around that time, probably found it more marketable than x86-64, becuase they had used it in commercial branding such as "Windows XP Professional x64 Edition" too. (They couldn't call Windows XP "64-bit edition" because that term was used for their Itanium-based (IA64) products).
Intel originally named it "IA-32e" to try to make it sound it was just a small extension on the 32bit x86 architecture whereas the Itanium IA-64 architecture was the future.
The post says '64-bit x86 ("x86-64" or "x64")' which is also roughly what the first sentence of Wikipedia has to say about it. I personally picked it just because it was shorter to type and easily understood in context.
The Grief over the use of x64 for AMD64 or X86-64 is based in the prior use of "x64" for the DEC Alpha architecture in the hardware naming: "DECchip 21x64" [0]
Digital was earlier to market the Alpha as a 64 bit ISA than either Intel's Itanium ( IA-64) or AMD's x86-64 which is also called AMD64 [1]
