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{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"Inconsistent results from platform.machine() on Windows ARM64","articleBody":"# Bug report\r\n\r\nRunning x86 and AMD64 builds of Python 3.11.0 (official binary releases) in emulation on Windows 11 on an ARM64 machine gives me\r\n\r\n```\r\nPython 3.11.0 (main, Oct 24 2022, 18:26:48) [MSC v.1933 64 bit (AMD64)] on win32\r\nType \"help\", \"copyright\", \"credits\" or \"license\" for more information.\r\n\u003e\u003e\u003e import platform\r\n\u003e\u003e\u003e platform.machine()\r\n'AMD64'\r\n```\r\n\r\n```\r\nPython 3.11.0 (main, Oct 24 2022, 18:13:38) [MSC v.1933 32 bit (Intel)] on win32\r\nType \"help\", \"copyright\", \"credits\" or \"license\" for more information.\r\n\u003e\u003e\u003e import platform\r\n\u003e\u003e\u003e platform.machine()\r\n'ARM64'\r\n```\r\n\r\nThis seem inconsistent. I would expect both to return `'ARM64'`, the actual underlying processor architecture, in the same way as running an x86 build on AMD64 returns `'AMD64'`. But even if they were reporting the emulated architecture, it should be `'AMD64'` and `'x86'`, not `'AMD64'` and `'ARM64'` (or possibly `'AMD64'` and `'AMD64'`, if x86 binaries are also handled by the AMD64 emulator, I have no idea how that works).\r\n\r\nThis makes it hard to distinguish between an AMD64 build running on ARM64 and an AMD64 build running on AMD64. In fact, the only `platform` function that gives any indication at all is `processor()`, and parsing the desired information out of the free-form text returned by that seems fiddly. (`'ARMv8 (64-bit) Family 8 Model 0 Revision   0,  '` and `'Intel64 Family 6 Model 44 Stepping 2, GenuineIntel'` here.)\r\n\r\nRelatedly, how do I distinguish between an ARM64 build running on ARM64 and an AMD64 build running on ARM64? The inconsistency above makes them differ in `platform.machine()`, but what if that were fixed? This seems like a job for `platform.architecture()`, which is explicitly meant to give information about the running binary, but that just returns `('64bit', 'WindowsPE')` in both cases. `platform.python_compiler()` happens to have that information (`'MSC v.1933 64 bit (ARM64)'` vs. `'MSC v.1933 64 bit (AMD64)'`), but again that is fiddly free-form text and may not work for other compilers than MSC.\r\n\r\n# Your environment\r\n\r\n- CPython versions tested on: 3.11.0\r\n- Operating system and architecture: Windows 11 10.0.22000 ARM64, Windows 10 10.0.19043 AMD64\r\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/cwalther","@type":"Person","name":"cwalther"},"datePublished":"2022-11-01T14:23:18.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":17},"url":"https://github.com/98962/cpython/issues/98962"}