Qualcomm Backs Off 'Marketing Gimmick' Comments About the A7's 64-Bit Benefits

[960design]

It amazes me that comments like that would come from an educated person. It seems that HR has completely failed Qualcomm. The fallout of this is that his ideas have either destroyed morale for his more educated underlings or truly holds the company's evolution at bay.

 

[white4s]

gotta love the people who open their mouth when they shouldn't

 

[technowar]

Now this news qualifies for a "Marketing Gimmick"!!

Be careful! They are Samsung, and they are not gimmicking. They are the real deal!

 

[kenetic]

Guess no one told top management about the 64bit finding.

 

[Kirb112]

Open mouth, insert foot, close mouth.

Well-said

 

[Gudi]

"The mobile hardware and software ecosystem is already moving in the direction of 64-bit"

The iPhone 5s mobile hardware and software ecosystem is already there.

 

[AllieNeko]

The thing is the guy is RIGHT. It's a gimmick really, with pros and cons (cons - needs more RAM, bigger applications, those of us with 16GB iPhones will feel the crunch if 64-bit apps become common).

So why backpedal if you're right?

1. Qualcomm supplies the radios for Apple, Apple may have been unhappy.
2. Qualcomm is also developing a 64-bit mobile processor

 

[pkr]

For a marketing guy to slam a feature that he will eventually have to support is .... well, it's stupid. For the Chief Marketing Officer to do this is freaking unbelievable.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

In other words: Apple is eating our lunch.

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For a marketing guy to slam a feature that he will eventually have to support is .... well, it's stupid. For the Chief Marketing Officer to do this is freaking unbelievable.

Says a lot about Qualcomm... It would make it hard for them to be caught working on a 'marketing gimmick' in the future... Foot firmly in mouth, and hopefully his rear end too... This industry is filled with bad market predictions.

 

[Taz Mangus]

The thing is the guy is RIGHT. It's a gimmick really, with pros and cons (cons - needs more RAM, bigger applications, those of us with 16GB iPhones will feel the crunch if 64-bit apps become common).

Actually he was WRONG.

You don't need more then 4GB in order for apps to take advantage of the improvements gained by A64. You are getting this confused with x64. The fat binaries, from what I have read, produced by Xcode are not that larger.

 

[XboxMySocks]

needs more RAM

Nope. Completely false.

bigger applications

Not completely false, but mostly misleading.

 

[jonnysods]

It blows my mind what type of processor they can fit in a phone now. Can't imagine another 10 years from now!

 

[C. Robert]

Its really hard not to call out anything android nowadays. Apple is putting 64 bit architecture into their phones, new chips to fix bad battery life that all smartphones suffer from. Apple isn't giving us what they think we need, they are following a proven business model. They use current technologies to make the end user experience better. Nokia and Microsoft are following in apple's footsteps and they do look ever more tempting. Especially a 41 mp camera. This is what kind of innovation that we get from android and its OEM's. Android OEM's are starting to look like Dell, HP, Sony, and toshiba of the late 90's. They are trying to stand out by suppling the market with gimmicks.

They all are utter nonsense. Im not going to hold a camera to my head to talk. Im not going to put a bent phone in my pocket. I don't need a flip or old number keyboard on my smartphone. Im not in star trek and I am not going talk into my wrist.

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

The thing is the guy is RIGHT. It's a gimmick really, with pros and cons (cons - needs more RAM, bigger applications, those of us with 16GB iPhones will feel the crunch if 64-bit apps become common).

Anything has pros and cons. If there are significant pros, then, it isn't a "gimmick", it is a choice. Historically, back in the big iron era, then again in the killer micro era, and again now in the PDA/embedded era, there have always been people who have said that going from 16-bit to 32-bit and then to 64-bit processors was a "gimmick". They have always been wrong, every time. It isn't a question of if 64-bit processors are coming, it is only a question of when.

So "gimmick" is always the wrong word. Was Apple premature in rolling this out now? It depends on a lot of things; I imagine every cell-phone manufacturer has a different timeline. But, I would think that a processor manufacturer would be eager to satisfy its customers' requirements.

To take a different example, look at the number of pixels in a camera sensor. There are always people who say that more pixels is a "gimmick". But, the truth is that these are engineering trades also. All other things being equal, more pixels is better. But, things are never equal. For a given sensor size, more pixels means smaller pixels, and potentially worse performance in low light. Then there is the type of grid, the cost of the sensor, and the processing power required to create different image formats (e.g. jpeg). So, more pixels isn't a gimmick, it is a choice that goes along with a bunch more choices.

The proof is in the pictures. I have a camera with a lot of pixels that takes excellent portraits and landscapes. Unfortunately, it is slow -- it has high shutter lag and a long gap between shots -- and is very poor for action photography. Having "more pixels" isn't a gimmick -- I get great still-life photos. But, for action photos, I would be better off with an iPhone 5S. If I had one.

 

[kenknotts]

It's good to see a responsible retraction of earlier uninformed and irresponsible comments.

That's because Qualcomm is probably working in 64 bit tech right now and getting ready to release it

 

[john123]

The guy is a fool

There's some inconsistency in your comments, and pointing it out illustrates why this debate was simultaneously very relevant and very irrelevant.

you can't rubbish something from another company that is very likely going to be exactly what your trying to push in a year or twos time.

This first statement is actually correct, and is the reason for the retraction. From a marketing standpoint, that sort of talk creates a total quagmire.

He obviously has no idea of the technical benefits of moving to ARM's V8 64bit architecture which are manifold. Anyone saying that increased address space is the only benefit of this new architecture also has no idea what they are talking about.

And here's where you start to go off the rails. First off, I don't know the guy's technical background, but I'd be surprised if he's not at least passably aware of the technical benefits. Per my earlier comment, it's important not to confuse marketing with cold hard facts, because the former has quite a spectrum.

Moreover, most of his comments get to the very semantic debate I mentioned in my first post in this thread. Chandrasekher comments, that, "Predominantly... you need it for memory addressability beyond 4GB. That's it. You don't really need it for performance." Well, what is "it"? What does the word "need" mean? Do you "need" 64-bit to attain architectural improvements? Not really (although it sure made it a heck of a lot easier). Did a bunch of stuff come with 64-bit that improved performance? Yup. Note that he goes on to acknowledge that, "From an engineering efficiency standpoint it just makes sense to go do (64-bit)," so it's not like the guy doesn't "get it."

The whole thing was intended to be a carefully worded marketing slam on the use of the term "64-bit", while avoiding mention of the stuff that came along with 64-bit itself. From a short-term marketing strategy, what Chandrasekher said wasn't crazy or inaccurate—but that's the problem. Long-term, that's playing with fire.

People criticizing the guy for not knowing what he's talking about clearly haven't bothered to actually read his words carefully and verbatim. The land mine he stepped on was marketing in nature, not technical.

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It amazes me that comments like that would come from an educated person. It seems that HR has completely failed Qualcomm. The fallout of this is that his ideas have either destroyed morale for his more educated underlings or truly holds the company's evolution at bay.

Oh please, let's not overblow the relevance of this. Have you actually worked at a company with a CMO? This sort of stuff is a non-story anywhere in the world except MacRumors.

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Funny that in the last week the competition had made some really stupid comments. 1st Eric from google and now this guy. Why can they just concentrate on making their own crap instead of slamming others?

Putting aside that I think you are dead-wrong about Chandrasekher's comments being "stupid," the answer to your question is that a key part of marketing is differentiating yourself from the competition, and that often involves debunking various claims. That's Marketing 101 in any business school.

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

And here's where you start to go off the rails. First off, I don't know the guy's technical background, but I'd be surprised if he's not at least passably aware of the technical benefits. Per my earlier comment, it's important not to confuse marketing with cold hard facts, because the former has quite a spectrum.

Moreover, most of his comments get to the very semantic debate I mentioned in my first post in this thread. Chandrasekher comments, that, "Predominantly... you need it for memory addressability beyond 4GB. That's it. You don't really need it for performance." Well, what is "it"? What does the word "need" mean? Do you "need" 64-bit to attain architectural improvements? Not really (although it sure made it a heck of a lot easier). Did a bunch of stuff come with 64-bit that improved performance? Yup. Note that he goes on to acknowledge that, "From an engineering efficiency standpoint it just makes sense to go do (64-bit)," so it's not like the guy doesn't "get it."

But, there is one thing he doesn't get.

The whole thing was intended to be a carefully worded marketing slam on the use of the term "64-bit", while avoiding mention of the stuff that came along with 64-bit itself. From a short-term marketing strategy, what Chandrasekher said wasn't crazy or inaccurate—but that's the problem. Long-term, that's playing with fire.

---

Putting aside that I think you are dead-wrong about Chandrasekher's comments being "stupid," the answer to your question is that a key part of marketing is differentiating yourself from the competition, and that often involves debunking various claims. That's Marketing 101 in any business school.

And this is where I have to differ. Not that I have ever really understood Marketing, let alone Marketing 101.

But, as a customer, I do care about more than "Day 1 Performance". Chandrasekher is basically saying that if my apps run and run as fast as I want, as an ordinary customer, I shouldn't care whether the magic is done with 64-bit addressing, or, 32-bit addressing+extensions, or, 16-bit addressing with segmentation registers, or, overlays, or, anything else going on behind the curtain. He is wrong. I should care, and here is why:

One reason that I have been more satisfied with Fords than some other car brands I have owned is that when I have driven through some remote town in the Rocky Mountains and something broke, spare parts have been readily available. That hasn't been true of some other brands. Now, maybe it has to do with the fact that I don't consider a car well broken-in until it has at least 100,000 miles on it, and, maybe you don't care, but, I care. I'm still using a 2007 white plastic Macbook, and, it was upgradeable until Snow Leopard. I had to recycle the PPC-based Macbook and iMac. If a customer cares about security and longevity, they are going to care about "architectural improvements" and "engineering efficiency", because the newer product that is more in line with the future is also much more likely to be supported 4-5 years from now. That is not a "gimmick" or a "latest and greatest". It just may be a better value if the product life expectancy is greater.

 

[john123]

If a customer cares about security and longevity, they are going to care about "architectural improvements" and "engineering efficiency", because the newer product that is more in line with the future is also much more likely to be supported 4-5 years from now.

That's absolutely fair. I imagine, though, if one cornered Chandrasekher in an interview and forced him to be honest, he would slyly retort that, "Well, we weren't talking about that aspect." But the dimension you raise is a completely legitimate one, and is a viewpoint that I suspect many, many users share.

 

[Jynto]

It is correct that some applications which rely on pointer-heavy data structures can see performance degradation. As to your second claims - more advanced instruction set means faster processing times. The A64 instructions set has more registers (which means more local variables can be kept on the CPU, avoiding the very expensive store/load operations), wider SIMD operations (which usually means faster math operations) and some specialised instructions which can improve certain algorithms. Creating instructions which make code be executed slower is a pretty dumb thing, so CPU designers don't do it anymore BTW, the execution speed of floating-point instructions via the SSE instruction set is MUCH faster then what the old x87 can do, and SSE can operate on multiple values at the same time.

x87? It's 1 higher than x86, so it must be good!

They're going back to the previous article and feverishly editing their comments.

Not me, I think he should have stuck to his guns.

 

[truettray]

See, I'm surprised that they haven't released a 64-bit Snapdragon chip yet... Apple is no where near cracking that 4gb RAM mark, but all these Android OEMS keep stuffing more memory into their devices. You'd think they would be more anxious than Apple to go 64 bit.

 

[everything-i]

There's some inconsistency in your comments, and pointing it out illustrates why this debate was simultaneously very relevant and very irrelevant.


This first statement is actually correct, and is the reason for the retraction. From a marketing standpoint, that sort of talk creates a total quagmire.


And here's where you start to go off the rails. First off, I don't know the guy's technical background, but I'd be surprised if he's not at least passably aware of the technical benefits. Per my earlier comment, it's important not to confuse marketing with cold hard facts, because the former has quite a spectrum.

Moreover, most of his comments get to the very semantic debate I mentioned in my first post in this thread. Chandrasekher comments, that, "Predominantly... you need it for memory addressability beyond 4GB. That's it. You don't really need it for performance." Well, what is "it"? What does the word "need" mean? Do you "need" 64-bit to attain architectural improvements? Not really (although it sure made it a heck of a lot easier). Did a bunch of stuff come with 64-bit that improved performance? Yup. Note that he goes on to acknowledge that, "From an engineering efficiency standpoint it just makes sense to go do (64-bit)," so it's not like the guy doesn't "get it."

The whole thing was intended to be a carefully worded marketing slam on the use of the term "64-bit", while avoiding mention of the stuff that came along with 64-bit itself. From a short-term marketing strategy, what Chandrasekher said wasn't crazy or inaccurate—but that's the problem. Long-term, that's playing with fire.

I stand by what I said, the guy made a fool of himself by attempting to rubbish the move to ARM 64bit architecture which is what Apple have done. If he does understand the underlying benefits then that is even worse. More over there is no marketing reason for him to comment on this at all as Apple is not a direct competitor as it does not supply any other company and are actually one of his best customers. If we are talking about marketing then what term was Apple supposed to use, '64bit' is about as technical a term as most of the general population can grasp. Lets not forget that Apple is marketing the A7's 64bit benefits not just the basic concept of 64bit computing, if Apple had just taken the 32bit architecture and made the registers and data paths 64bit then what he said would have some meaning and I would be the first to agree with him but that is not what Apple have done. He says that there are mainly engineering benefits when that is not the case at all, there are real tangible performance improvements in many cases and in some cases large improvements. From a marketing perspective talking about ARM V8 internals like processing pipeline improvements and totally reworked instruction decode logic and better branch prediction logic would make no sense to any but a negligible part of the target audience. Apple have managed to forge ahead with this move and are marketing it appropriately, this guy simply came over like a jealous child who didn't know what he was talking about.

 

[leman]

x87? It's 1 higher than x86, so it must be good!

If this was supposed to be a pun then I don't get it. Care to explain?

 

[Jynto]

If this was supposed to be a pun then I don't get it. Care to explain?

I thought x87 was a type*. That was me making a joke about it.

*Edit: typo. Now that was ironic.

 

[iChrist]

What is with Qualcomm? Is their CMO an idiot? What's his problem?

Agree it is stupid beyond belief for upper level guys to run their mouth and make unprofessional insults and comments. This is why I find Phil Shiller so annoying. Just do your job and shut up, your company doesn't need to go into PR mode for childish remarks.

 

[leman]

I thought x87 was a type. That was me making a joke about it.

No, not a typo