You can use Sun Studio to build 32-bit programs and 64-bit programs.  So what is that choice called, anyway?  Is it “data model”, “memory model”, “data addressing model” ?  Is it an ABI?  And how is it related to those compilation styles on x86 where you can have large/small/medium/tiny memory models?  Is that a “memory model” too or a “code model”?  Our doc writer Richard started asking those questions, and Wikipedia wasn’t really that helpful in the terminology department. Are there any other good sources for choosing a terminology?  Check out Richard’s blog for more details.

Alan Burlison responded with:

ILP32 and LP64

See http://www.unix.org/version2/whatsnew/lp64_wp.html

Thanks for the pointer, Alan. They call it “model” and “programming model” most of the time. But that page also uses the terms “pointer model” and “data model” (once each).