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Qualcomm Marketing Executive Calls Apple's 64-Bit A7 Chip a 'Marketing Gimmick'
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His statements, have of course been taken out of context and slightly exaggerated.
"A benefit of 64-bit is more memory addressability, but that is not relevant in today's smartphones or tablets.
Predominantly... you need it for memory addressability beyond 4GB. That's it. You don't really need it for performance"
Pretty much spot-on if you ask me.
As is this:
"The chip maker ultimately will deliver a 64-bit mobile chip, but sees the move as more beneficial from engineering, chip design and OSes standpoints.
"From an engineering efficiency standpoint it just makes sense to go do that. Particularly the OS guys will want it at some point in time"
The guy is absolutely, 100% spot-on.
People, I get that many of you have blind love for all things Apple, but that doesn't mean that you can't admit that sometimes, Apple's rhetoric doesn't match up with the evidence. For those of you who aren't relatively new to the Apple bandwagon, who remembers the "Megahertz Myth"?
The best argument is the one made above by one poster about future-proofing things. But real-world performance gains today? Give me a break.
Apple was one of the first to acknowledge and integrate the Megahertz Myth into their strategies. Also, the wider registers from the 64 bit design do speed it up - around a 10% gain. It sounds like you haven't actually read up on it or looked into benchmarks. Check out anandtech's review. I'll make it even easier for you: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/4
Haters gonna Hate ????
9 million in three days .......... if i was on the other side, i will hate too
9 million in three days .......... if i was on the other side, i will hate too
just as a point, if you go on to Apple's site, it says this:
"There’s fast. And then there’s A7 fast. The new A7 chip gives you CPU and graphics performance up to 2x faster than the A6 chip. Even more impressive, A7 makes iPhone 5s the first 64-bit smartphone in the world — that’s desktop-class architecture in a superslim phone. And because iOS 7 was built specifically for 64-bit, it’s uniquely designed to take advantage of the A7 chip."
the A7 is faster than before and it's 64-bit... it also says it "ahead of it's time", "advanced", or forward thinking etc... *Yes* it's marketing but it does not say the 64-bit makes it faster.
It's ALL of the other review sites that jumped in that is arguing whether the 64-bit is making it faster. Of course when you introduce something newer there won't be things that take full advantage of it. And sure the iPhone only has 1GB of RAM ... but iOS7 can/will be used in other Apple devices that might soon use 4GB.
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"There’s fast. And then there’s A7 fast. The new A7 chip gives you CPU and graphics performance up to 2x faster than the A6 chip. Even more impressive, A7 makes iPhone 5s the first 64-bit smartphone in the world — that’s desktop-class architecture in a superslim phone. And because iOS 7 was built specifically for 64-bit, it’s uniquely designed to take advantage of the A7 chip."
the A7 is faster than before and it's 64-bit... it also says it "ahead of it's time", "advanced", or forward thinking etc... *Yes* it's marketing but it does not say the 64-bit makes it faster.
It's ALL of the other review sites that jumped in that is arguing whether the 64-bit is making it faster. Of course when you introduce something newer there won't be things that take full advantage of it. And sure the iPhone only has 1GB of RAM ... but iOS7 can/will be used in other Apple devices that might soon use 4GB.
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he is harsh but he is telling the truth
and btw, no one would ever notice the difference between an iPhone 5 and a 5s
except for some games, otherwise, 99.9% of people would not notice during their daily regular use
and btw, no one would ever notice the difference between an iPhone 5 and a 5s
except for some games, otherwise, 99.9% of people would not notice during their daily regular use
No, he does not have a point about that. It is not the biggest benefit. The biggest benefit is word length (size of the registers) and the number of registers in the new design. You can fit more data in the fastest storage in a CPU (registers) than with the previous ARM designs.
This will give you faster math, faster encryption/decryption and faster data transformations. That data can be text, images, video or sound. Think filters and effects in an editor.
It will take a long while before ARM tablets and phones are using 4GB of ram let alone more than 4GB but the advantages of the new architecture will be self evident long before then.
Apple has a huge lead with the chip already out and developer with access to the 64bit compiler and simulator.
I remember when people thought gyros and accelerometers were useless when they were included in the iPhone, now look at how many useful applications there are that utilize this technology.
Why would Apple not advance techonology if it's available and cost effective? There is a reason why they did not include CD/DVD drives into macbook airs... it's time to stop living in the past
Why would Apple not advance techonology if it's available and cost effective? There is a reason why they did not include CD/DVD drives into macbook airs... it's time to stop living in the past
So how do you explain that some operations are faster running in 64-bit mode than the same operations running in 32-bit mode on the same device on the same chip? Some operations are also slightly slower, but overall, 64-bit performance is faster. And since the system is new, I very much doubt it's even highly optimized for 64-bit code yet. Granted, most of the 64-bit benefits will come in the years ahead, but there is a real, measurable performance benefit right now that's only going to get better.
Did you read the article your post is responding to or just go to the comments? Read the end of the article, if that is not enough for you, follow Ash's link.
If your still confused, others have also pointed out that the encryption functions in ARM64 are likely used to improve the responsiveness of the fingerprint reader. Is this a benefit of 64-bit, but since it does not exist without ARM64, it is a benefit of the architecture..
... aaaaaand once again we have armies of people that know nothing about what it really means to have 64bit architecture thinking they know what it means (it's really only for >4GB RAM!) trying to agree with other people that also don't fully understand all the implications.
There are a few of us that write software, and have for many, many years, that deal with 32bit vs 64bit hardware at a deep enough level that can't do much more than cradle our heads in our hands when this sort of dialogue barfs forth on the forums, blogs, or idiotic declarations like this tool from Qualcomm (who, really, should know better but is taking advantage of the public's understandable lack of true knowledge in this area).
There are many types of applications that will see an improvement running on a 64bit platform as opposed to 32bit. There are many that won't. All of us run a mix of those apps that will and will not benefit from having a 64bit CPU and a 64bit bus underneath them. Some of the apps that benefit will see minor improvements, some will see huge improvements. Blanket declarations like '>4GB of RAM is the only real reason to use 64bit' are borne out of the birth of 64bit penetration in the consumer PC market where sales people at Best Buy and Fry's pointed out, when asked by potential customers "why should I get a 64 bit system", responded with the RAM answer. It's a correct answer. It's just nowhere near a complete answer.. it's simply the easiest one to explain and the easiest one for a layman to understand. That's grown into this fallacious concept that the only real reason need it is for RAM access beyond the 4GB mark.
There are a few of us that write software, and have for many, many years, that deal with 32bit vs 64bit hardware at a deep enough level that can't do much more than cradle our heads in our hands when this sort of dialogue barfs forth on the forums, blogs, or idiotic declarations like this tool from Qualcomm (who, really, should know better but is taking advantage of the public's understandable lack of true knowledge in this area).
There are many types of applications that will see an improvement running on a 64bit platform as opposed to 32bit. There are many that won't. All of us run a mix of those apps that will and will not benefit from having a 64bit CPU and a 64bit bus underneath them. Some of the apps that benefit will see minor improvements, some will see huge improvements. Blanket declarations like '>4GB of RAM is the only real reason to use 64bit' are borne out of the birth of 64bit penetration in the consumer PC market where sales people at Best Buy and Fry's pointed out, when asked by potential customers "why should I get a 64 bit system", responded with the RAM answer. It's a correct answer. It's just nowhere near a complete answer.. it's simply the easiest one to explain and the easiest one for a layman to understand. That's grown into this fallacious concept that the only real reason need it is for RAM access beyond the 4GB mark.
Except that I am pretty sure the note 3 already had 3gb of ram and the note 4 will likely have 4gb making 64bit cpus useful around this time next year
Technically, yes. But you can't break the memory limit unless the 64 bit chip comes first.
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And still pure ****** apps to run, so it makes no difference.
Having it both ways?
"It's just a gimmick... oh, but we're making one too."
I guess I feel a little bad for him... he knows he's damaging his own credibility with tech-savvy folks but he can't admit his own company's chips are behind the curve.
If ARM64 was just about memory addressibility it would be a gimmick, at least for a few years. But dig into that Mike Ask article if you want to understand it.
Here's my summary:
- ARM64 has new instructions that make special kinds of processing much faster. Impact: large, but rarely applicable
- ARM64 has a bunch more general purpose registers. Impact: could modestly improve performance across a varierty of apps.
- Apple uses the 64-bit addresses to good effect, using the extra bits not to address more memory but to store and access information more efficiently, making certain common operations dramatically more efficient. Impact: should modestly improve performance across a wide variety of apps.
- ARM64 code and runtime objects will take up more space because all the pointers -- which are common in code -- are twice the size. Impact: not sure. For the apps I've written, the resources (graphics, mainly) by far take up most of the RAM and are not affected. I'd guess the impact would be on the order of megabytes, which isn't significant. But there are many kinds of apps out there, so this could be an issue.
- ARM64 has more and better floating point registers. Impact: Could modestly improve performance for a variety of apps.
All-in-all, it's should generally make things a little snappier. I honestly can't tell if it will translate to the real world (except for the few things that are able to use the new specialized instructions -- those will be dramatically faster.)
"It's just a gimmick... oh, but we're making one too."
I guess I feel a little bad for him... he knows he's damaging his own credibility with tech-savvy folks but he can't admit his own company's chips are behind the curve.
If ARM64 was just about memory addressibility it would be a gimmick, at least for a few years. But dig into that Mike Ask article if you want to understand it.
Here's my summary:
- ARM64 has new instructions that make special kinds of processing much faster. Impact: large, but rarely applicable
- ARM64 has a bunch more general purpose registers. Impact: could modestly improve performance across a varierty of apps.
- Apple uses the 64-bit addresses to good effect, using the extra bits not to address more memory but to store and access information more efficiently, making certain common operations dramatically more efficient. Impact: should modestly improve performance across a wide variety of apps.
- ARM64 code and runtime objects will take up more space because all the pointers -- which are common in code -- are twice the size. Impact: not sure. For the apps I've written, the resources (graphics, mainly) by far take up most of the RAM and are not affected. I'd guess the impact would be on the order of megabytes, which isn't significant. But there are many kinds of apps out there, so this could be an issue.
- ARM64 has more and better floating point registers. Impact: Could modestly improve performance for a variety of apps.
All-in-all, it's should generally make things a little snappier. I honestly can't tell if it will translate to the real world (except for the few things that are able to use the new specialized instructions -- those will be dramatically faster.)
Glad you quoted Anand, because he's smart and that's an excellent place to start. Go back and re-read page 4 of the iPhone 5S review. You'll find that all the performance gains discussed are attributed to new instructions and the larger register space. Those things, again, are items that came with the move to 64-bit but are not inherently "about" 64-bit.
All I'm talking about is what the 64-bit move, in and of itself, does. In other words, take out the new instructions and larger register space, and evaluate 64-bit versus 32-bit architecture ceteris paribus. Would the 64-bit beat the 32-bit? Nope, they're going to be about the same.
Maybe we're just having a semantics debate about what's inherent and not inherent to 64-bit architecture. I hope that's the case.
No, thats not spot on. Applying an old PC-mindset to a new device-class is a moronic thing to do. That might have been MOSTLY true in desktop environments, but not for mobile ARM environments. iOS 7 and the development community have already gone at length at just what the implications of 64-bit iOS have brought to their arsenal. For Christs sake, the proof is already LIVE in the App Store, with several apps updated to 64-bit having noticeable improvements.
But of course, uninformed people and sour marketing executives want to keep beating the drum "64-bit can only address more memory space, thats it"
Not sure why you think there are no 64 bit apps. All of the pre-loaded apps are 64-bit. Several apps have made their updates ios7 only so they could go 64-bit as well....
Agreed,
I think it is more of Apple's goal to get developers used to coding for future iOS devices that are 64Bit in Hardware, and also have over 4GB of memory. The iPhone 64 BIT architecture is crippled only by it's lack of RAM, but as you say, I expect we will see iOS (as well as Android) devices with more than 4GB of memory in the next few years.
The guy is absolutely, 100% spot-on.
People, I get that many of you have blind love for all things Apple, but that doesn't mean that you can't admit that sometimes, Apple's rhetoric doesn't match up with the evidence. For those of you who aren't relatively new to the Apple bandwagon, who remembers the "Megahertz Myth"?
The best argument is the one made above by one poster about future-proofing things. But real-world performance gains today? Give me a break.
You need to look further back into Apple's history to relate and quote a relevant analogy . This is not a revival of the MHz Myth, it is more inline with how some of the 68k, and early PowerPC systems had architecture limits, compared to their advertised specifications.
But not much due to the move to 64bit - but rather other architectural improvements:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/4
"The AES and SHA1 gains are a direct result of the new cryptographic instructions that are a part of ARMv8"
"The DGEMM operations aren't vectorized under ARMv7, but they are under ARMv8 thanks to DP SIMD"
Performance differences are pretty much all over the map otherwise.
That's silly. You can't get those advantages without moving to the 64-bit architecture. They are an advantage of moving to 64-bit.
No, FFS, scroll up. Read the specifics in what Anand says, page 4. For the billionth time, 64-bit in and of and by itself doesn't make any difference.