Wild guess, naming it '32bit extended' allowed Intel to still refer to Itanium as the 'real 64 bit' back in those days. Intel didn't want the x86 to be 64bit..

Wild guess, naming it '32bit extended' allowed Intel to still refer to Itanium as the 'real 64 bit' back in those days. Intel didn't want the x86 to be 64bit.. they wanted the world to switch to Itanium for that. I figure a lot of the naming mess can be traced back to Intel's marketing.