This. A 100 times this. Finally someone said it. If you're not in the hardware/software business, or you can't read a simple Wikipedia page, then please keep your opinion based on misinterpreted information to yourself.
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Qualcomm Marketing Executive Calls Apple's 64-Bit A7 Chip a 'Marketing Gimmick'
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This. A 100 times this. Finally someone said it. If you're not in the hardware/software business, or you can't read a simple Wikipedia page, then please keep your opinion based on misinterpreted information to yourself.
Its not a gimick because Apple is SHIPPING a fully 64bit version of iOS 7 with iPhone 5S. I'm sure there are some 32bit sections to work out of the code, but by iOS 8 next September, nearly ALL APPS should have pure 64bit versions on the App Store. 64bit means Apple's bundled apps and in-house apps between OSX and iOS get closer together and easier to manage. The difference in experience between mobile devices and computers in the Apple fold is getting really small really fast. THAT is what 64bits now buys them.
I think the point of 64-bit is that Apple wants to remove all remaining 32-bit code from OSX as soon as possible and iOS being an off-shoot of OSX and something likely to one day merge with OSX again is holding things back. By moving to 64-bit for iOS devices, they will eventually be able to go pure 64-bit in everything OSX. This may not be an immediate advantage for anyone (even most OSX apps), but getting the pain out of the way NOW will avoid much bigger problems in the future (like Windows suffered with having to have separate versions of OSX and separate drivers and all kinds of BS with no drivers available for 64-bit, etc.) By removing these issues NOW, Apple will have a smoother transition into the future than M$ ever had.
Talk nonsense about an Apple product (which this Qualcomm marketing executive did), and there will be sensible and well-founded refutations.
Let me summarize the whole situation, without trying to answer any specific post.
ARM has developed a new processor architecture, which various companies are going to translate into hardware. Apple has already done it, Qualcomm is working on it. Considering that Qualcomm is working on implementing the exact same architecture, calling Apple's finished chip a "marketing gimmick" is a bit daft.
ARM's new architecture as a whole has multiple advantages. The biggest advantages are: More registers, crypto support, vector double precision floating point, 64 bit arithmetic, multi-terabyte RAM and VM support, and removal of features that limit clock speed. All advantages except 64-bit arithmetic and multi-terabyte memory could have been achieved without adding 64 bit, but building a new architecture incompatible to ARM's would have been a pretty stupid thing to do.
In the 64 bit version of MacOS X, Apple has been using various techniques to take advantage of 64 bit-ness to make things faster, and all these things apply now to iOS. There have been benchmarks showing that just allocating and deallocating objects on the same 5S has 20-45% speed improvement fron 32 to 64 bit. 64 bit arithmetic gives significant advantages in many areas without any redesigning apps. Many can get significant boosts with slight changes.
Multi-terabyte memory is often mentioned and called pointless. But with multi-terabyte memory, media files can be memory-mapped without problems. There are plenty of videos or eBooks that exceed a gigabyte, so memory mapping just isn't an option with 32 bits.
And there is the potential for higher clock speeds (by changing the architecture). That, however, cannot be achieved today. That has to wait until 32 bit speed on 64 bit devices is unimportant. And that will be some years after the first 64 bit device appears. So 64 bit devices are needed _now_ to enable higher clock speed as early as possible.
To me it sounds like you are arguing that Apple was justified in waiting for LTE chipsets to become more power efficient and for LTE to more widely penetrate the carriers markets before marketing a phone with it. Surely, an argument of "at some point in the future, it [LTE] will make sense" would not be held against Apple.
For some reason, though, I fail to believe that your same criticism (or that of others, being raised) would be advanced against Samsung or Google where either of them the one who, last month, were the first to market with a 64-bit processor in their phone. Instead I'd be inclined to believe I'd hear something along the lines of, "See, Samsung leads the market again! Apple is once again lagging behind the curve. Why don't they step up to the plate for once."
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Take a look at
http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review
by Anand Lal Shimpi. The article is based on testing and analysis, not just hot air.
What Apple did was move from an ARM architecture that was about a decade old (ARMv7) to something newer and better (ARMv8), and it just happens to be 64-bit. The change brings a bundle of good things to the processor including hardware acceleration for crypto tasks, and more and larger registers. The merit of the change shows in the performance of the chip.
Why is it anything different for Apple to advertise that A7 is 64 bit, than for Qualcom to advertise it's products as quad core.
Well, its rather simple. The critics of A7 here (including yourself btw.) for some reason get stuck at the notion '64-bit', without going any further. While the other look at the A7 as the whole, i.e. the improvements it brings beyond 'just being 64-bit'.
I'll give you an example that'll blow your mind.
You know the Crysis series? Games have apparently the best graphics EVAR! There's a 32-bit and 64-bit version of Crysis 1, which is still the most hardware intensive in the series. Requires CPU and GPU power the iDeviecs have yet to touch.
You know how big of a performance gain jumping from 32-bit and 64-bit gives you?
Zilch.
Hell, most of those awesome, graphically intensive games you see on Windows, like Bioshock Infinite and the rest...they're all 32-bit.
Once again, there are advantages to 64-bit. Infinity Blade III won't take advantage of a single one. It looks nicer, loads quicker, and performs better on the 5S because the A7 is a faster chip with higher memory bandwidth and a better GPU. None of which have anything to do with 64-bit. It's all hardware.
I have to comment on that, because all the BS about how little it matters can be laid to rest with a simple test:
- Download Xcode5
- Open a new iOS project, you can take Apple sample code if you wish.
- Change the project settings to ARM 64bit
- Compile and run on your phone if you are a dev.
- Or, go to the Product Menu and select "Assemble <Filename.m>"
Result:
Watch the beautiful compact 64bit code with reduced load/store and lots of "register to register" transfers.
You have no effing idea how great this is compared to the old arm code.
(This is a real demo project of mine)
I try to attach two screenshots:
- Download Xcode5
- Open a new iOS project, you can take Apple sample code if you wish.
- Change the project settings to ARM 64bit
- Compile and run on your phone if you are a dev.
- Or, go to the Product Menu and select "Assemble <Filename.m>"
Result:
Watch the beautiful compact 64bit code with reduced load/store and lots of "register to register" transfers.
You have no effing idea how great this is compared to the old arm code.
(This is a real demo project of mine)
I try to attach two screenshots:
Attachments
Since you can't have the fastest processor of its kind without 64 Bit
it seems futile to argue if some imaginary 32 Bit processor could be
almost as fast if it just had almost the same architecture.
"I know there's a lot of noise because Apple did [64-bit] on their A7," said Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Qualcomm, in an interview. "I think they are doing a marketing gimmick. There's zero benefit a consumer gets from that."
it seems futile to argue if some imaginary 32 Bit processor could be
almost as fast if it just had almost the same architecture.
"I know there's a lot of noise because Apple did [64-bit] on their A7," said Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Qualcomm, in an interview. "I think they are doing a marketing gimmick. There's zero benefit a consumer gets from that."
Hilarious
This is hilarious. If android put a 3ghz quad core chip in a phone it would be innovative. So now apple push the boundaries and it's a gimmick?
Yes I have an iPhone amongst other apple products but I am capable of a balanced opinion and this argument seems ridiculous to me.
This is hilarious. If android put a 3ghz quad core chip in a phone it would be innovative. So now apple push the boundaries and it's a gimmick?
Yes I have an iPhone amongst other apple products but I am capable of a balanced opinion and this argument seems ridiculous to me.
No joke. It's like they are pissed that Apple didn't go snapdragon so their stuff is junk
The last time Qualcomm provided anything innovative and useful was.... in the 1990s, with a popular Email program named Eudora. 
You just contradicted yourself here, though you may not realize it. A 64 bit bus gives you higher memory bandwidth.
Synopsis...
"64-bit ARMv8 chips were introduced in 2011, so Apple isn't the first to do this......64-bit is a marketing gimmick......we will be releasing our own 64-bit chips soon."
Step one: get defensive
Step two: decry technology as gimmick
Step three: announce your own chip based on technology you just called a gimmick
That's the three-step plan for how to look like a butt-hurt business exec.
"64-bit ARMv8 chips were introduced in 2011, so Apple isn't the first to do this......64-bit is a marketing gimmick......we will be releasing our own 64-bit chips soon."
Step one: get defensive
Step two: decry technology as gimmick
Step three: announce your own chip based on technology you just called a gimmick
That's the three-step plan for how to look like a butt-hurt business exec.
And if you have no idea what this guy/girl just said, or don't have the skill set to do what he/she just described, you really are in no position to comment authoritatively one way or the other on this topic.
What? No. That's not it at all.
The one thing limiting clock speeds on ARM devices are voltage and heat issues. The higher you clock a processor at a certain die size, the more power it needs. The more power it needs, the less battery life you get, and the hotter it runs. 64-bit has nothing to do with it.
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It does not. Memory bus is wider than 64 bits. This bus has its own "architecture".
So the Qualcomm LTE radio stuffed in i-Devices is not useful?The last time Qualcomm provided anything innovative and useful was.... in the 1990s, with a popular Email program named Eudora.
No, memory bandwidth is mostly centered around your northbridge (or whatever equivalent thing ARM chips use). The wider the bus between the memory and the northbridge, the faster the CPU can access it. That's purely the domain of hardware.
To put it in the simplest terms possible, what 64-bit does is allow the CPU to crunch numbers more efficiently. Everything you see people talking about on here, it's all hardware, and can be done in 32-bit just as well.
Yup. On an x86 at least, I think the bus between the northbridge and the ram is 256-bit, right?
Not talking about core apps.
But just recompiling apps witha 64bit compiler does not inherently make them faster.
People talking about 3D fills and such do please remember that those are done by the GPU and not the processor.
64 bit does indeed make some things faster but for the most part the performance gains seen in the A7 are not specifically related to 64 bit.
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No it would still be gimmick.
