Qualcomm Marketing Executive Calls Apple's 64-Bit A7 Chip a 'Marketing Gimmick'

[MagnusVonMagnum]

"64-bit" is simply a marketing buzzword based on the "bigger is better" school of thought. Apple did it with the first G5 cheese graters, and now they're doing it with phones. Yawn.

I don't understand all the brouhaha over this. Either the CPU is 64-bit or it isn't. Whether or not that makes any difference is 100% MOOT. If they called it 32-bit when it's a 64-bit CPU, it would be fraud so WTF is the big deal that they're calling it a 64-bit CPU when it IS a 64-bit CPU???

Until this Qualcomm marketing executive made this claim, I didn't pay one bit of attention to whether the CPU was 64-bit or not. I couldn't care less. But because the competition is making a big deal about it, now I DO know it's a 64-bit chip whether I want to or not and as I stated before, it makes a lot of sense for Apple to move to 64-bit even when it's not "useful" because it means iOS and OSX are once again on a level playing field so that it's easier to merge or partially merge them. Apple has been working very hard to wipe out all their 32-bit code in OSX and it's pretty obvious they will one day make it mandatory just as they've depreciated Carbon, etc. You can't blame them for moving into the future. Microsoft will have and has had a much harder time going pure 64-bit and frankly, it's caused them a lot of problems with incompatibilities due to a lack of 64-bit drivers and yet if you wanted more than a couple of Gigs of ram, you were screwed with the 32-bit version. How many years will it be before the iPad is capable of using 4+ Gigs of ram? They could do it next year if they really wanted to. They could move it to full OSX if they wanted to. Getting the CPUs in-line with OSX only makes sense in that regard. Whether iOS merges into OSX or OSX merge with iOS, either way the writing is on the wall. They will one day have ONE operating system for everything. Whether that's in two years or twenty years, it doesn't really matter. It's best to move things in that direction sooner rather than later to keep options open.

 

[hstewart]

I'm sure the 64-bit processor will make the eventual merging of OSX and iOS much easier for Apple, though.

Sure the CPU use in OSX machines is many times more powerful for the cpus in iPhones and iPad. The day that Apple moves an ARM cpu on the OSX Macbook (air) type machine - is day I leave using Apple products

As for 64bit - memory wise it nice, especially if you running VMWare, forget a ARM based cpu running x86 cpu virtually - it not going to be handle it.

But 64 bit has other benefits in application, I used be in job where I did years of x86 development including protected mode OS work. Not too family with cpu language, but with 64 bit, you likely have more registers, fast memory moves because you can move 64 bits at a time, math calculations have bigger words and any other architecture enhancements

I think it is funny they think it a myth, when Apple just release XCode update for 64 bit compiler. This comes from a company that also cheated on benchmarks - go figured.

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ARMv8's 64-bit mode can use more general purpose registers than 32-bit mode.
This could explain why just recompiling with 64-bit makes some apps faster.
This is the same situation as AMD64 (x86-64) vs IA32 (x86).

Plus memory moves and other calculations. But it likely makes the application binary size bigger in size - especially if they support but 64 bit and 32 bit.

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We already know the A7 is a good deal faster than the A6, which you're proving here. The real test would be how much faster a 64-bit app vs. a 32-bit one is on the 5S.

That also depends on how good the compiler is - the nice thing is Apple has both the compiler and cpu. But I think the real improvements would be seen in the new iPad

I am not sure how much it needed in a phone and on a mobile cpu. We are not talking about workstation level of cpus here

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Off base.
The processor gets instructions from cache and will not load two instrcutions into the execution unit.

Cache is filled via the external DDR interface and the size of that DDR bus has nothing to do with cache line size or processor bus width. External DDR bus will not be 64 or or even 32 bits wide.

The ARM64 architecture has the following:
New instruction set, A64
Has 31 general-purpose 64-bit registers.
Has separate dedicated SP and PC.
Instructions are still 32 bits long and mostly the same the 32 bit architecture

THIS IS IMPORTANT -> Has paired loads/stores (in place of LDM/STM).
Most instructions can take 32-bit or 64-bit arguments.
Nothing said about multiple 32 bit arguments.
Multiple arguments would make it a SIMD architecture and for ARM the SIMD stuff is in the DSP extensions. Things like MAC, etc.

Addresses assumed to be 64-bit.
Advanced SIMD (NEON) enhanced
Has 32× 128-bit registers (up from 16), also accessible via VFPv4.
Supports double-precision floating point.
Fully IEEE 754 compliant.
AES encrypt/decrypt and SHA-1/SHA-2 hashing instructions


Also note that the speedup seen in games from A6 to A7 is the newer GPU.
It's Imagination Technologies four core PowerVR G6430.
The older A6 GPU was 266 MHz triple-core PowerVR SGX543MP3

Not sure of the speed but faster and one more core.
So people stop saying the graphics are faster because the A7 is 64 bit.
The graphics are faster because it has a killer GPU.

The Snapdragon uses Adreno GPUs from ATI now AMD, Adreno is an anagram of Radeon.....

Anyway.....
64 bit is not the primary reason it's faster.
The architecture is different with different, more modern GPUs.

Some one that actually knows about cpu differences. It be curious what A7X will have - likely more GPU cores - but possible more cpu cores - but I doubt it - faster cpu/gpu speed.

 

[SlCKB0Y]

The REAL purpose for 64bit apps is to bring OSX and iOS frameworks closer together. Now Apple can share more optimized framework code between the two OSes, and devs can more easily write apps that play on both iOS and OSX.

No doubt! They'll be able to merge a lot more of the code between the projects and it should reduce a bunch of maintenance overhead.

 

[gnasher729]

People, READ what was said and try to UNDERSTAND what was said.

He said that CONSUMERS won't benefit from that 64-Bit CPU (architecture) in the iPhone 5S AT ALL. And he is RIGHT. The 64-Bit design itself doesn't make anything faster, and the phone does not have more than 4GB of RAM so the real advantage of using a 64-Bit architecture does not even come into play.

Totally, absolutely wrong. There are plenty of cases where iOS code runs faster because the processor is a 64 bit processor. Not because the processor just runs faster, or because there are more registers in 64 bit mode, but because it is 64 bits. Go back through this thread.

And you really should know that 64 bit addresses are not about the amount of RAM, but about address space. Totally different. With 64 bit, you can memory map large files without worrying about running out of address space. Can't do that with 32 bit. And that has nothing to do with RAM. Address space randomisation to prevent hacker attacks works a lot better with 64 bit addresses, no matter how much RAM you have.

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ARMv8's 64-bit mode can use more general purpose registers than 32-bit mode.
This could explain why just recompiling with 64-bit makes some apps faster.
This is the same situation as AMD64 (x86-64) vs IA32 (x86).

The published improvements in object allocation / deallocation come directly from using 64 bits.

 

[firewood]

Sure the CPU use in OSX machines is many times more powerful for the cpus in iPhones and iPad.

My iPhone 5s benchmarks a few numeric apps at about the same performance as the (OS X 10.8.x) 2009 MacBook Pro that I still use.

That's equally powerful. 1X. Not many times.

But it likely makes the application binary size bigger in size - especially if they support but 64 bit and 32 bit.

No one noticed that apps supporting both armv6 and armv7 (3G plus later devices), or both armv7s and armv7 (iPhone 5 plus earlier devices) made the fat binary bigger by around 2X. So I doubt many will notice the diff with the addition of arm64.

 

[Renzatic]

funny, i thought we were talking about mobile devices/processors here, lol... by the way i have done microprocessor chip design.

Funny, because all processors are functionally the same, using the same underlying principals and designs lol...by the way, I'm the king of France. AKA THE STATE!

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And you really should know that 64 bit addresses are not about the amount of RAM, but about address space. Totally different. With 64 bit, you can memory map large files without worrying about running out of address space. Can't do that with 32 bit. And that has nothing to do with RAM. Address space randomisation to prevent hacker attacks works a lot better with 64 bit addresses, no matter how much RAM you have.

I suggest you do the same. Even that link a bunch of people were slathering across the board states it doesn't make a profound difference in normal smartphone usage.

 

[AidenShaw]

I don't understand all the brouhaha over this. Either the CPU is 64-bit or it isn't. Whether or not that makes any difference is 100% MOOT. If they called it 32-bit when it's a 64-bit CPU, it would be fraud so WTF is the big deal that they're calling it a 64-bit CPU when it IS a 64-bit CPU???

It's the simple fact that ignorant customers will see the ads and say "Oh, 64 is bigger than 32 - so it's better".

That's misleading, since "64" of and by itself will have little or no value over "32" for the vast majority of users.

 

[dec.]

It's the simple fact that ignorant customers will see the ads and say "Oh, 64 is bigger than 32 - so it's better".

That's misleading, since "64" of and by itself will have little or no value over "32" for the vast majority of users.

And because some customers could think that the iPhone 5S gold is made of actual real gold, they should rename that to "Faux gold aluminium finish", now! It's "misleading"!!,! That silly "ignorant customer" crowd, tsts...

 

[Renzatic]

And because some customers could think that the iPhone 5S gold is made of actual real gold, they should rename that to "Faux gold aluminium finish", now! It's "misleading"!!,! That silly "ignorant customer" crowd, tsts...

You have to understand that when people post contrary to popular opinion around here, they're not being "apple haters". They're being "condescending, ill informed consumer correcters".

Like how you see all these people pop up, bashing Samsung's quad core ARM chips as pointless spec racing, then immediately turn around and praise the wonders of Apple's 64-bit chips as the best things ever. It's all spec racing, so if someone is gonna bash one, they should be bashing the other, rather than tripping all over themselves to find ways to justify it.

I mean it's fine that Apple has their gold 64-bit iPhones. It's actually gold colored and 64-bit, so you can't accuse them of false advertising. But let's quit pretending it's the bestest, most innovative thing ever, huh?

 

[Dontazemebro]

Yet no mention of possibly better battery life since 64 bit CPU process operands twice as large in a single clock cycle or double the address space that's twice as large to address data.

Yes yes Mr. Anand, sour you are. 64 bit is the future.

 

[DeathChill]

You have to understand that when people post contrary to popular opinion around here, they're not being "apple haters". They're being "condescending, ill informed consumer correcters".

Like how you see all these people pop up, bashing Samsung's quad core ARM chips as pointless spec racing, then immediately turn around and praise the wonders of Apple's 64-bit chips as the best things ever. It's all spec racing, so if someone is gonna bash one, they should be bashing the other, rather than tripping all over themselves to find ways to justify it.

I mean it's fine that Apple has their gold 64-bit iPhones. It's actually gold colored and 64-bit, so you can't accuse them of false advertising. But let's quit pretending it's the bestest, most innovative thing ever, huh?

Have you actually seen this or are making this up completely?

 

[Renzatic]

Yet no mention of possibly better battery life since 64 bit CPU process operands twice as large in a single clock cycle or double the address space that's twice as large to address data.

Yes yes Mr. Anand, sour you are. 64 bit is the future.

So in theory, 64-bit apps should not only consume less battery life, it should also be twice as fast as 32-bit apps? A CPU that processes double the amounts of information in a single clock cycle should be twice as fast and twice as efficient, right? 100% gains across the board.

I'll let Aidenshaw get into the nitty gritty details, since he seems to know a lot more about the lower level workings than I do. But I do know enough to say that...no...that's not quite the way it works.

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Have you actually seen this or are making this up completely?

I'm making it up. There hasn't been a single, yet alone hundreds, of posts around here talking about how useless Samsung's quad core mobile processors are over the last few months. And Apple's 64-bit processors? It's true. Everyone's been very tempered and guarded in their praise.

None of it is true at all.

 

[DeathChill]

I'm making it up. There hasn't been a single, yet alone hundreds, of posts around here talking about how useless Samsung's quad core mobile processors are over the last few months. And Apple's 64-bit processors? It's true. Everyone's been very tempered and guarded in their praise.

Do you happen to know if even a single person who has been praising Apple's 64-bit processor has ranted how useless quad-core is (though I suppose you could actually feel like one strategy is better)? You do know that there are thousands of people on this site, all with differing opinions, right?

 

[Dontazemebro]

So in theory, 64-bit apps should not only consume less battery life, it should also be twice as fast as 32-bit apps? A CPU that processes double the amounts of information in a single clock cycle should be twice as fast and twice as efficient, right? 100% gains across the board.

I'll let Aidenshaw get into the nitty gritty details, since he seems to know a lot more about the lower level workings than I do. But I do know enough to say that...no...that's not quite the way it works.

.

Correct me if I'm wrong but less clock cycles for same amount of work, thus more sleep time for cpu equals better battery life, no?

 

[Renzatic]

Correct me if I'm wrong but less clock cycles for same amount of work, thus more sleep time for cpu equals better battery life, no?

Okay, I'm about to hit that limit to my knowledge that I talked about above, but here's how I understand it.

Larger address space, operands, ect. They're all being processed by the CPU to perform a single action as requested by the program. Having a larger amount of these means it can perform more complex actions per tick. But ask yourself this, has the iPhone come close to saturating 32-bit processors yet? Have developers and programmers started running into a performance bottleneck due to the CPU only being able to handle 32-bit threads? Do we have any apps that absolutely need that extra room provided by 64-bit? For the most part, no. Having that extra space to play in doesn't automatically mean you can do twice as much of everything in a single tick. It's only there if you need it.

And since 99.9% of iPhone apps don't need it, it doesn't give anyone a boost to anything simply by its mere presence. You will see some advantages, but they won't make for a profound difference. Not until the iPhone and iPad are able to handle more complex applications.

Like I said before, 64-bit is better at crunching through large blocks of data more efficiently than 32-bit. But if your app isn't throwing large blocks of data at it, then it's no better than 32-bit.

 

[Dontazemebro]

Okay, I'm about to hit that limit to my knowledge that I talked about above, but here's how I understand it.

Larger address space, operands, ect. They're all being processed by the CPU to perform a single action as requested by the program. Having a larger amount of these means it can perform more complex actions per tick. But ask yourself this, has the iPhone come close to saturating 32-bit processors yet? Have developers and programmers started running into a performance bottleneck due to the CPU only being able to handle 32-bit threads? Do we have any apps that absolutely need that extra room provided by 64-bit? For the most part, no. Having that extra space to play in doesn't automatically mean you can do twice as much of everything in a single tick. It's only there if you need it.

And since 99.9% of iPhone apps don't need it, it doesn't give anyone a boost to anything simply by its mere presence. You will see some advantages, but they won't make for a profound difference. Not until the iPhone and iPad are able to handle more complex applications.

Like I said before, 64-bit is better at crunching through large blocks of data more efficiently than 32-bit. But if your app isn't throwing large blocks of data at it, then it's no better than 32-bit.

Fair enough, I believe I've surpassed my limit as well but I can definitely see real world advantages once apps/os has been recompiled to 64 bit architecture.

 

[fertilized-egg]

And since 99.9% of iPhone apps don't need it, it doesn't give anyone a boost to anything simply by its mere presence. You will see some advantages, but they won't make for a profound difference. Not until the iPhone and iPad are able to handle more complex applications.

Like I said before, 64-bit is better at crunching through large blocks of data more efficiently than 32-bit. But if your app isn't throwing large blocks of data at it, then it's no better than 32-bit.

That sounds short sighted. It's a chicken and egg problem. If Apple gives more horsepower to the developers, they'll make use of it.

And I don't believe we have to go that far to imagine possible scenarios. Multimedia authoring tools will likely see immediate benefit from having the new arm v8 64bit instruction set, starting with Apple's own iMovie and Garageband. Imagine what kind of content generating tools developers will be able to produce with more hardware power to handle movies, animations, pictures, and sound.

I'm making it up. There hasn't been a single, yet alone hundreds, of posts around here talking about how useless Samsung's quad core mobile processors are over the last few months.

Actually there's a very good reason to criticize the multicore race on mobile. If you listen to Anandtech podcast, in one episode they lament that the current quadcore processors suffer from the throttling issue due to heat which can make them slower than their specs in actual usage. They also mention the user experience would be better off if Android makers instead use energy efficient dualcore processors concentrating on performance and energy efficiency on each core. However because Android makers and the SoC suppliers are caught up in race, they just cannot go back because it'll look inferior to quad/octacore marketing spree. Apple can afford doing it because, well, they are Apple and they can emphasize other marketing points.

The worse offenders for this phenomenon is probably the cheap Chinese phones with the slower Cortex-A7 quadcore processors. It just boggles my mind that they'll use slower cores just so that they can market it as "quadcore". I do know it's to hit a price point and satisfy a marketing requirement but it just seems silly.

 

[dec.]

You have to understand that when people post contrary to popular opinion around here, they're not being "apple haters". They're being "condescending, ill informed consumer correcters".

So far I've had the impression that there was a very well mixed opinion on pretty much anything that Apple does, including so called "fanboys", "haters" and "average consumers", so it's kind of hard for me to determine what "popular opinion" on this board is...

Like how you see all these people pop up, bashing Samsung's quad core ARM chips as pointless spec racing, then immediately turn around and praise the wonders of Apple's 64-bit chips as the best things ever. It's all spec racing, so if someone is gonna bash one, they should be bashing the other, rather than tripping all over themselves to find ways to justify it.

To be honest, I don't follow anyone here close enough to remember if he posted nasty things about the Samsung Quad Cores and then praised the Apple 64-Bit chips, so maybe you can help me out with linking one or two examples, even if others might consider it rude to point out specific forum members, I think it's important to expose those bigots!

I mean it's fine that Apple has their gold 64-bit iPhones. It's actually gold colored and 64-bit, so you can't accuse them of false advertising. But let's quit pretending it's the bestest, most innovative thing ever, huh?

Who did pretend that it's the bestest, most innovative thing ever?!

Burn them with fire!

 

[yogibeartacodog]

So Apple has moved their flagship phone to 64-bit. Ahead of any need to do so.

What's this discussion about? Their marketing vs competitors marketing? I haven't seen any ads pushing the importance of 64-bit architecture for consumers. No promises of immediate performance gains. No benchmarks.

Developers should be the ones paying attention.

How long until all mobile OSes are 64-bit? How long until Apple merges OSX and iOS? This looks like planning ahead to me.

 

[Renzatic]

That sounds short sighted. It's a chicken and egg problem. If Apple gives more horsepower to the developers, they'll make use of it.

And I don't believe we have to go that far to imagine possible scenarios. Multimedia authoring tools will likely see immediate benefit from having the new arm v8 64bit instruction set, starting with Apple's own iMovie and Garageband. Imagine what kind of content generating tools developers will be able to produce with more hardware power to handle movies, animations, pictures, and sound.

Actually, I agree with you here. I'm not saying 64-bit is useless on mobile. Far from it. What I'm saying is that it's not giving Apple a big advantage right now. For the moment, 64-bit is merely...there. Developers have access to it, but can't full advantage of it yet.

I think the same thing about mobile quad core processors. For the moment, dual core is more than enough. Even decent ARM processors can multitask through mobile apps easily enough, leaving one core to the OS, and the other to handle everything else. It's a talking point, nothing more.

But around the same time 64-bit starts hitting its stride on mobile, you're gonna see multi-core ARM processors running right alongside it. After all, you want a lot of processing power to edit movies, pictures, and 3D models on your future 12+ inch iPad Pro.

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To be honest, I don't follow anyone here close enough to remember if he posted nasty things about the Samsung Quad Cores and then praised the Apple 64-Bit chips, so maybe you can help me out with linking one or two examples, even if others might consider it rude to point out specific forum members, I think it's important to expose those bigots!

I'm gonna leave it vague cuz I've got enough time-outs as it is, kthx.

 

[dec.]

I'm gonna leave it vague cuz I've got enough time-outs as it is, kthx.

That's ok, I wasn't really expecting a name anyway. " "

 

[fertilized-egg]

Actually, I agree with you here. I'm not saying 64-bit is useless on mobile. Far from it. What I'm saying is that it's not giving Apple a big advantage right now. For the moment, 64-bit is merely...there. Developers have access to it, but can't full advantage of it yet.

I think the same thing about mobile quad core processors. For the moment, dual core is more than enough.

No they are not the same thing. Moving to the arm v8 64bit doesn't bring much downside, especially when Apple controls the developer toolchain and have them ready. Also Apple already has a number of apps in the ecosystem that could take advantage of it. Just think of applying photo filter in real time and making adjustments to the videos in iMovie. As a bonus it moves the developers forward and get them ready for the future as well.

On the other hand, going with quad or octacore at the expense of faster individual cores brings a legitimate downgrade to the user experience in the current mobile usage. Surely with the smaller node processes coming along, sometime in the future we'll have more cores but at this point it seems premature. Samsung themselves had all sorts of problems with the big/little octa Exynos and prefer quad Qualcomm chips.

 

[Renzatic]

No they are not the same thing. Moving to the arm v8 64bit doesn't bring much downside, especially when Apple controls the developer toolchain and have them ready. Also Apple already has a number of apps in the ecosystem that could take advantage of it. Just think of applying photo filter in real time and making adjustments to the videos in iMovie. As a bonus it moves the developers forward and get them ready for the future as well.

Yup. I've mentioned those previously when talking about the advantages that 64-bit will bring. But even there it won't make for a profound difference. Will it be better? Yup. Amazingly so? Not really. It might shave a healthy few seconds off a reencoding job compared to doing the same thing on a 32-bit processor, but most of the speed advantages you'll be seeing are due to the advancements Apple's made with their processor hardware, not 64-bit itself.

We've still got a little ways to go before we start seeing 64-bit make a huge, noticeable difference on mobile. But like you said, there aren't all many disadvantages, so why not do it now instead of later?

On the other hand, going with quad or octacore at the expense of faster individual cores brings a legitimate downgrade to the user experience in the current mobile usage. Surely with the smaller node processes coming along, sometime in the future we'll have more cores but at this point it seems premature. Samsung themselves had all sorts of problems with the big/little octa Exynos and prefer quad Qualcomm chips.

I didn't know Samsung sacrificed individual core performance for a multicore layout. If that's the case, then it's it's not just a fluff feature, but a huge step backwards.

Though from what I've read, the Snapdragon 800 was the best in class for ARM chips up until the release of the A7. Going quad core might've been overkill, but it's single core performance was far better than just merely decent enough.

...I think I need to get a little more caught up on all these ARM chips, and what all they can do.

 

[OneMike]

I agree with their comment and it's the same thing many here said.

 

[phrehdd]

It seems that one would have to take the chip in question and run tests on it along with identical tests on the counterparts to decide which is faster or more "able" at certain tasks. After that both would have to be able to use identical OS to determine which performs better and that is not likely to happen.

If Apple is guilty of one thing with the new chip/phone its the questionable changes in the IOS and does it better serve Apple users using older models than the 5c and 5s (and 5).