Name given the 32 bit version of
x86 assembler from
Intel. Implemented on every Intel processor since the original Pentium, IA32 is a
CISC,
register/memory architecture. As such, it features a large number of specialty instructions and a small number of general purpose registers.
IA32 is a recent designation for the architecture, added after Intel unveiled their new IA64 architecture, a 64 bit EPIC design first implemented in the Itanium processors. It is also used to distingush x86 architectures that do not support x86-64, and extension of x86 from AMD that supports 64 bit addressing (along with several other enhancments to x86). In this use, all processors from AMD since the K5 qualify as IA32.