system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why does x86 represent a 32bit OS when x64 represents a 64bit OS?
gpt
Technically, the official name for x64 is x86-64. x86 is the name of the instruction set of a CPU. An instruction set is quite literally a set of instructions, all CPUs with the same instruction set will output the same thing for each input. x86-64 was a modification to x86 made by Intel's competitor, AMD, because x86 was 32 bit and because of this, couldn't support more than 4 GB of RAM among other things. It was designed to be reverse compatible with x86 programs.

The name of x86 originates with Intel's naming scheme, where all their early processors were named in 4 or 5 numbers, ending in 86, beginning with 8, but had their middle numbers changed. So the x stands for the numbers in the middle, like 8086 or 80486. They were given the variable x since they could be many different numbers, and that is why it is called x86. x64 comes obviously from the new 64 bit platform.