Qualcomm Employee: 64-Bit A7 Chip 'Hit Us In The Gut'

[SmileyDude]

Apple is still just as much vertically integrated on desktop computers as they are on phones and tablets. It's kinda their thing... Apple controls almost everything in their products end-to-end.

To review:

• Company A designs the hardware and the software. (Apple)
  
  
• Company B buys the processor from Company C and gets the OS from Company D. (other companies)

There's nothing wrong with the second method... sometimes that's all a company can do.

But Apple is firmly planted in the first method.

Well, on the OS X side, Apple is slightly less integrated than on the iOS side. They control the overall hardware and OS, but they still have to use whatever Intel, AMD and Nvidia give them. I think they would love to be able to get themselves out of that dependency, but realistically, they just can't anytime soon.

iOS is clearly how they would prefer to do things. Perhaps OS X will get there one day too.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Well, on the OS X side, Apple is slightly less integrated than on the iOS side. They control the overall hardware and OS, but they still have to use whatever Intel, AMD and Nvidia give them. I think they would love to be able to get themselves out of that dependency, but realistically, they just can't anytime soon.

iOS is clearly how they would prefer to do things. Perhaps OS X will get there one day too.

That's true.

I didn't intend to bring desktop/OSX into the discussion... I was just replying to Dmunjal

 

[9000]

Well, on the OS X side, Apple is slightly less integrated than on the iOS side. They control the overall hardware and OS, but they still have to use whatever Intel, AMD and Nvidia give them. I think they would love to be able to get themselves out of that dependency, but realistically, they just can't anytime soon.

iOS is clearly how they would prefer to do things. Perhaps OS X will get there one day too.

Not how I prefer it. No upgrades and only Apple replacements if they get to control their whole desktop PC side. But if they ever do that, the future Mac users can read my signature and weep VVV

 

[akbarali.ch]

How often do we see similar reports in the press?

1. Apple releases a new product.
2. Competitors gripe that it's a worthless upgrade.
3. Apple sells tons of devices.
4. Competitors rush to make their devices like Apple's.

It always happens, since first keyboard-less phone to the current iphone with 64bit and finger print sensor. Everything is worthless, then, later everyone rushes making it a defacto.

 

[osofast240sx]

The Note 3 is the first and only production phone to have 3GB of RAM. It wouldn't be surprised if the Note 4 has 4GB of ram with a 64bit processor. I don't see a lot of developers really pushing for 64bit apps because why bother when Apple still uses small amounts of memory on a platform that's already quick and still has tons of 32bit hardware roaming the market. Sadly when I had the iPhone 5s there were still apps that haven't been updated for the 4" display. I could only imagine 3 possible resolutions when the next iPhone comes out. It will take at minimum 2 years for 64bit to become mandatory on iOS.

Android will not have 64 bit for long time.

 

[Parasprite]

5. Apple and competitors end up in court due to petty patent and other technology squabbles.

6. Go to step 4

 

[Dmunjal]

Apple is still just as much vertically integrated on desktop computers as they are on phones and tablets. It's kinda their thing... Apple controls almost everything in their products end-to-end.

To review:

• Company A designs the hardware and the software. (Apple)
  
  
• Company B buys the processor from Company C and gets the OS from Company D. (other companies)

There's nothing wrong with the second method... sometimes that's all a company can do.

But Apple is firmly planted in the first method.

The vertical method does allow more innovation in a timely manner but is more expensive because it requires greater margins to pay for the extra R&D.

The other model seems to scale better and usually results in lower costs for the end customer though lower margins for the company.

Let's see what happens in the Smartphone world. Qualcomm is selling a boatload of Snapdragons lately.

 

[Solomani]

Do you think a 64-bit email app will allow you to type out words faster? Will it send your messages any quicker? What about 64-bit Angry Birds? Will it allow for...what...more birds onscreen? Will it suddenly be better because you can stuff twice the amount of data into a 64-bit register? Hell, these apps aren't even coming close to saturating a 32-bit chip. 64-bit won't do anything.

I'd like 64-bit porn! Because 32-bit is just too small.

 

[mozumder]

Well, on the OS X side, Apple is slightly less integrated than on the iOS side. They control the overall hardware and OS, but they still have to use whatever Intel, AMD and Nvidia give them. I think they would love to be able to get themselves out of that dependency, but realistically, they just can't anytime soon.

iOS is clearly how they would prefer to do things. Perhaps OS X will get there one day too.

It's just a matter of time.

Apple did just recently develop in-house 3-D GPU capability, so that might come down the pipeline soon.

Ultimately we may even see Apple create the entire CPUs/GPUs for Mac OS X. My guess is that they're just waiting to ramp up their in-house CPU/GPU design capability to be competitive with Intel/AMD/Nvidia. Otherwise they'll use whatever is cheapest or more cost-competitive.

This may include Apple running their own fabs, if that saves them money in the long term.

 

[Renzatic]

I'd like 64-bit porn! Because 32-bit is just too small.

No, man! 64-bit shows ALL the ass pimples!

 

[hchung]

64 bit doesn't increase speed. It only allows for more data to be accessible. It allows more memory beyond the 4GB limit. Last I knew there are no phones with more then 2GB of RAM let alone an application that needs access to more data at once. If you write the application in 64bit it might be a tiny bit faster but it's too small for it to even matter. Should I mention that the apps you use on your smart phone are small enough where it doesn't need to access that much data? Hell most of the applications for PC's don't require 64bit memory addressing including most games you buy for PC.

There's literally zero benefit in a smart phone.

I'm a systems engineer and I approve this message.

You are a very poor systems engineer then or a poster child of why systems engineers should stay out of software concepts. ArmV8 has little to do with a mythical 4GB issue and everything to do with performance per watt.

I am a software engineer and I approve this message.

You two are both a little bit correct, but mostly trying to handwave away the fact that neither of you know what's really going on.

Yes, 64-bit typically has no place on the smartphone. (I'll be the first to admit I thought Apple jumped the shark as they announced the A7.)
Yes, they're not trying to address 4+ GB of ram.
Yes, it takes more memory. Yes, it hurts the cache.
Yes, it's typically more power hungry per cycle compared to a 32-bit design of the same caliber.
Yes, if all you were doing was looking at it from the textbook point of view, 64-bit hurts performance on mobile devices.

But there's there's two reasons why going 64-bit improved performance on iOS devices, even for simple apps, despite all the downsides of going 64-bit.
1) Less importantly, there's more registers. ARM64 and all that. Small beans.
2) Most importantly, because of the way Obj-C works, many memory management operations require traversing through multiple pointers. As you two (hopefully) know, memory access is much slower than register access. So when going 64-bit, Apple changed the runtime to pack some of the data into the pointer itself because the pointer is so much wider, so that most of those memory accesses are optimized out and the remaining ones are closer. Given that most apps on iOS are written in Obj-C, that's how you get up to 50% improvement across the board on the 64-bit platform.

When you do more work while using less memory bandwidth and tune your improvements to your most obvious weak spot, pretty much every other detail doesn't matter.

Every engineer should (re)learn computer architecture.

https://mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-you.html

 

[Winni]

When are people going to get that moving to 64-bit improves performance regardless of how much RAM the device has?

People don't need to "get" that since it simply is not true. This has been discussed a billion times already, but believing in marketing is more popular than believing in measurable facts...

 

[Zodiac.mj]

Apple switched to 64bit ARM, because it's the future. Software like iOS may seen not quite ready at the moment, benefits are blurry, but being already there gives them big advantage over competition. They ARE THERE, and now they can focus on fixing all the bugs and maxing out the benefits.

 

[TMay]

You two are both a little bit correct, but mostly trying to handwave away the fact that neither of you know what's really going on.

Yes, 64-bit typically has no place on the smartphone. (I'll be the first to admit I thought Apple jumped the shark as they announced the A7.)
Yes, they're not trying to address 4+ GB of ram.
Yes, it takes more memory. Yes, it hurts the cache.
Yes, it's typically more power hungry per cycle compared to a 32-bit design of the same caliber.
Yes, if all you were doing was looking at it from the textbook point of view, 64-bit hurts performance on mobile devices.

But there's there's two reasons why going 64-bit improved performance on iOS devices, even for simple apps, despite all the downsides of going 64-bit.
1) Less importantly, there's more registers. ARM64 and all that. Small beans.
2) Most importantly, because of the way Obj-C works, many memory management operations require traversing through multiple pointers. As you two (hopefully) know, memory access is much slower than register access. So when going 64-bit, Apple changed the runtime to pack some of the data into the pointer itself because the pointer is so much wider, so that most of those memory accesses are optimized out and the remaining ones are closer. Given that most apps on iOS are written in Obj-C, that's how you get up to 50% improvement across the board on the 64-bit platform.

When you do more work while using less memory bandwidth and tune your improvements to your most obvious weak spot, pretty much every other detail doesn't matter.

Every engineer should (re)learn computer architecture.

https://mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-you.html

That was easily the best article on the subject posted at the time, and quite accessible to anyone with a bit of understanding of CPU's/GPU's.

It's almost certainty that Apple timed the release of the first major reworking of iOS to the adoption across the board of ARMv8 architecture, and it has been a bit messy, but it's getting cleaned up fast. A bold move.

 

[FrozenDarkness]

what's weird to me is that apple's chips are made by samsung, so two of the biggest phone manufacturers are privvy to Apple's 64-bit plan. Qualcomm must've been really blind-sighted to not see where the industry is going.

 

[Michael Scrip]

The vertical method does allow more innovation in a timely manner but is more expensive because it requires greater margins to pay for the extra R&D.

The other model seems to scale better and usually results in lower costs for the end customer though lower margins for the company.

Let's see what happens in the Smartphone world. Qualcomm is selling a boatload of Snapdragons lately.

Good point!

I was just saying that there are great benefits for Apple keeping the planning and design in-house. If they want something... they design the hardware and software themselves.

However... if LG wanted to make a 64-bit phone... they'd have to do the following:

1. Call Qualcomm to see if they have a 64-bit chip available
2. Call Google to get them to create a 64-bit operating system

There are more parties involved when you're not vertically integrated like Apple.

Again... I'm not saying either method is better... just different

 

[eoblaed]

Still think 64 bit is stupid. My iPad Air can't keep more than 1.5 tabs loaded at a time. It is actually worse than the iPad 3 and iPhone 5 in Safari. Whatever performance benefits there are are outweighed by the pointless extra ram usage.

Then you should get your devices looked at. My iPad Air currently has 8 tabs open and my iphone 5S has 11. Both are highly responsive and totally fluid. The RAM requirements for 64 bit are negligible. Something else is wrong with your iPad if you really can't keep more than a tab or two open.

 

[chuckygetslucky]

Still think 64 bit is stupid. My iPad Air can't keep more than 1.5 tabs loaded at a time.

Hmm... Safari has never crashed on my Air - I have six tabs open right now, and I often have more. Nor has any other app crashed. And has my 5s has never crashed. Maybe I got lucky. I think I'll go buy a lottery ticket.

 

[Hattig]

So PREDICTABLE.

It's already been established that there are more benefits to a 64-bit architecture than an increase in RAM capacity.

No, I don't care to elaborate. You can search ANY thread that mentions "64-bit".

I think he might be talking about increased code size within applications (and the OS) and runtime data structures due to use of 64-bit pointers, etc.

But that neglects the fact that most applications are 98% media (images, audio) so increased code size will have a negligible effect overall. Runtime data structures could though - a web page DOM is massive and will be full of pointers to substructures and superstructures.

 

[throttlemeister]

When are people going to get that moving to 64-bit improves performance regardless of how much RAM the device has?

When are people going to get that 64-bit doesn't say anything about performance?

When are people going to get that with 64-bit certain calculations can be done more efficient, but others significantly less?

When are people going to get that marketing lines are not the same as truth?

 

[gnasher729]

Yes, it's typically more power hungry per cycle compared to a 32-bit design of the same caliber.

You are outing yourself here. AArch64 (the 64 bit ARM architecture) uses less power. The instruction set has been simplified. Twenty years of experience of what works well and what doesn't in the 16 and 32 bit instruction set lead to changes that improve the operation of the processor.

 

[unlinked]

2. Call Google to get them to create a 64-bit operating system

How much work do you think that is? Linux has supported 64bit ARM since 2012.

 

[Michael Scrip]

How much work do you think that is?

I have no idea. Someone here said 64-bit Android won't be ready for a long time. Who knows though.

Google was probably planning on going 64-bit sooner or later. Maybe they're now moving up their timeline.

Linux has supported 64bit ARM since 2012.

Great! But that wasn't my point.

Other companies still have to wait for Google to update Android to 64-bit. They're at Google's mercy. That's what happens when you rely on other companies to provide your software. There's no point in putting 64-bit hardware in phones until Google's 64-bit software is ready. But after reading this article... it doesn't sound like Qualcomm is ready for 64-bit hardware anyway. So everybody waits.

Apple didn't have to wait on anyone because they make their own OS and design their own hardware. Apple is vertically integrated... which is what I've been saying. It's proving to be a good thing in this particular case.

 

[mrxak]

You can definitely tell who here reads sites like AnandTech, and who doesn't. As I recall, simply recompiling apps for the new architecture gets about 10% performance gain on average. It's not much, but it's "free" performance simply with the new architecture. Different apps of course can be optimized better than others, but some apps will see significant improvements with a bit of new coding, but at the very least, most apps will see an improvement just by recompiling existing code.

But yeah, 64-bit on its own isn't some magical thing. It's the new architecture that happens to be 64-bit. Now, to be fair, switching to 64-bit now isn't really needed. The 10% performance bump for most apps for free is nice, but what this really does is get developers working on 64-bit years before it's going to be needed. Apple gets a competitive advantage on marketing in the near future, but in the long run, they will be happily 64-bit only while other manufacturers are still struggling with their own transition at the same time they're also running into memory issues. Not to mention Apple controls both the OS and the hardware. iOS developers will have only one architecture to target going forward, while it's likely Android and others will have a smattering of cheap 32-bit devices hanging on for quite a while. Apple's clean transition will look very advantageous compared to the mess that other platforms are due for in a couple years.

So I fully understand why Qualcomm and others are worried, and why they reacted so angrily when Apple made this move. Apple leveraged their most important advantage, control over both hardware and OS, to make a difficult transition seem easy, long before anyone else was really thinking about it. Only Apple can do something like this, and it hurts everyone else's feelings to get out-classed like this. What's more, it's a spec thing, and Apple's competitors are all about specs (instead of user experience). Apple competing with them on specs too? That's just unfair!

 

[osofast240sx]

I have no idea. Someone here said 64-bit Android won't be ready for a long time. Who knows though.

Google was probably planning on going 64-bit sooner or later. Maybe they're now moving up their timeline.



Great! But that wasn't my point.

Other companies still have to wait for Google to update Android to 64-bit. They're at Google's mercy. That's what happens when you rely on other companies to provide your software. There's no point in putting 64-bit hardware in phones until Google's 64-bit software is ready. But after reading this article... it doesn't sound like Qualcomm is ready for 64-bit hardware anyway. So everybody waits.

Apple didn't have to wait on anyone because they make their own OS and design their own hardware. Apple is vertically integrated... which is what I've been saying. It's proving to be a good thing in this particular case.

why would Google do this for andriod when they are moving to chrome OS.