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

[appleii.c]

Can someone explain the interest to integrate a 64bits SOC in a smartphone or a tablet ?

Thanks

The same interest there is in integrating 4 cores and 8 cores and 2ghz+ processors in future phones and tablets. These devices are beginning to duplicate many of the tasks that desktop computers do today. They are becoming business machines, graphics machines, gaming machines. As technology continues to advance, OSes will become one on both mobile and desktop. The lines separating the two continue to blur. It's only a matter of time before the mobile devices will need a desktop class CPU to run the OS itself, not to mention some of the software.

 

[portishead]

So 64-bit is a marketing gimmick, but yet they're working on 64-bit themselves. Riiiiight.

 

[joelvega125]

"marketing gimmick" could also be used to describe 95% of Samsung features in their phones.

 

[Ubuntu]

So is there also no advantage in 64 bit desktop cpu's as well? And what about the marketing behind dual core and quad core chips in smartphones? Android users FAP FAP FAP FAP all day long over the fact they have a quad core smartphone.

(edited to reflect quad core cpu's)

Of course 64 bit is completely useless. That's why every new computer comes with a 32bit processor

Wasn't he just talking about mobile phones and tablets, most - if not all - of which don't need more than 4GB of RAM? I believe you misread the article.

 

[bsolar]

That's not really the point. Just because it makes little or no difference today, it is nearly certain that it will make a significant difference in years to come.

I disagree that makes little or no difference today. I think many are focusing only on the memory addressing issue, but that's not the whole story. A 64bit cpu can be actually much faster in performing some specific kinds of computations thanks to its larger register size. Encoders/decoders are an example of software which manage much higher performance on 64bit CPUs for this reason.

These improvements can be relevant even today with "only" 1GB of RAM and things can only improve as developers optimize their applications and Apple optimizes the compiler even further.

 

[CBJammin103]

I wouldn't even consider the A7 a marketing point at all. If you polled 100 iPhone owners on the streets, I doubt more than 1 (if that, even) would know what processor was in the iPhone 5s. No one bought the iPhone 5s solely because of the name of the CPU... Android users, on the other hand, seem more concerned with this sort of thing on the whole. Maybe 5 out of 100 Android users would know what was in their phone CPU-wise.

 

[Tintorera]

Chandrasekher:
"I think they are doing a marketing gimmick. There's zero benefit a consumer gets from that."

Chandrasekher goes on to say:
"Qualcomm is developing a 64-bit chip for use in mobile applications"

....ok then

 

[york2600]

Of course 64 bit is completely useless. That's why every new computer comes with a 32bit processor

If you're desktop was still shipping with a 32 bit processor you'd be limited to 4GB of RAM (outside of memory addressing shenanigans). The push to 64bit occurred when server applications started to demand large amounts of memory.

 

[HiRez]

As an example: The C++ library used by Apple has a significant optimisation that allows C++ strings that fit into three words (with 2 bytes of overhead) to be stored into three words, without any memory allocation. On a 32 bit processor, that optimisation is good for strings up to 10 characters (3 x 4 - 2), like "characters". Strings with 11 or more characters take a lot longer because memory needs to be allocated for them. On a 64 bit processor, the exact same optimisation is good for strings up to 22 characters (3 x 4 - 2), like "This is a long string." Lots of C++ code handling strings will run a lot faster in 64 bit mode because of this.

Right, and Apple is also using the usused bits of the 64-bit pointer to store the retain count information directly in the pointer (all 64 are not needed for memory addressability yet), which leads to significant gains in object creation and deallocation. So again, there are places where 64-bit is a performance win, not theoretically in the future, but right now.

 

[chrmjenkins]

If you're desktop was still shipping with a 32 bit processor you'd be limited to 4GB of RAM (outside of memory addressing shenanigans). The push to 64bit occurred when server applications started to demand large amounts of memory.

And surprise, surprise, ARM wants A57 to show up in servers.

 

[bdkennedy1]

How is an evolutionary step in processing a marketing gimmick?

 

[polterbyte]

Here's a marketing gimmick for ya: a marketing executive calling a marketing gimmick something made by the competition.

 

[john123]

My issue is that Apple has nowhere said it's better or faster only because it's 64 bit. They provided independent speedup metrics.

Yet, people respond to the fact that it's 64-bit as if they is what they are saying, or they are faulting Apple for people making that incorrect assumption. The plain fact is that they would have been silly to not mention it or suggest it won't be faster for any reason. They're criticizing apple for marketing it exactly as they would have, if not more disingenuous. For instance, they love to talk about core counts, whereas apple didn't even bother this time.

Thus, it all comes across to me as "I'm mad you got to talk about this as a feature before I did."

Totally fair. I think you and I are actually in complete agreement as it turns out.

 

[XboxMySocks]

If you're desktop was still shipping with a 32 bit processor you'd be limited to 4GB of RAM (outside of memory addressing shenanigans). The push to 64bit occurred when server applications started to demand large amounts of memory.

I know, hence my heavy intended sarcasm. My genuine apologies that it wasn't strong enough to be deduced over the internet.

 

[GFLPraxis]

The chip itself is not a gimmick, the "64-bit" marketing hype is, and people here are drooling for more...



Name one way the iPhone 5S experience is improved by being 64-bit instead of 32.

Performance.

From the counter-article in the OP:

My casual benchmarking indicates that basic object creation and destruction takes about 380ns on a 5S running in 32-bit mode, while it’s only about 200ns when running in 64-bit mode. If any instance of the class has ever had a weak reference and an associated object set, the 32-bit time rises to about 480ns, while the 64-bit time remains around 200ns for any instances that were not themselves the target.

In short, the improvements to Apple’s runtime make it so that object allocation in 64-bit mode costs only 40-50% of what it does in 32-bit mode. If your app creates and destroys a lot of objects, that’s a big deal.

There is, in fact, a performance difference running the same app compiled 64-bit as opposed to 32-bit.

 

[motorazr]

I'm having deja-vu from when the G5 was introduced...

I remember a number P4 fans at the time kept trying to say how 64-bit didn't help anyone anyway... wasn't really going to be a practical solution to anything... hmmm

 

[JHankwitz]

Isn't it true that only apps designed to run on 64 bit will benefit? So we would see little or no benefit until most apps are upgraded?

 

[jtara]

Still, there are very few client applications which actually need an address space of more then 4GB (and the fact that the vast majority of windows applications are still 32-bit proves it).

I'd bet, though, that the vast majority of OSX applications are now 64-bit. So, proves nothing, except that Windows users and software vendors are slow to upgrade.

But I think the quoted statistic is a long-obsoleted myth, along with "most Windows applications aren't multi-threaded." It's been 10 years since I've written any Windows software. But I can't recall a project I've been involved in that wasn't multi-threaded.

 

[tshrimp]

Can't argue with the comments. I am glad the A7 is 64bit, but currently it benefits nothing. In the future i think that will change though. Apple stating it gives a 2-4 time performance boost is admittedly incorrect. That is not to say the A7 isn't 2-4 times faster, it is just that the reason is not the 64bit architecture.

 

[osofast240sx]

Wasn't he just talking about mobile phones and tablets, most - if not all - of which don't need more than 4GB of RAM? I believe you misread the article.

Why doesn't my smart phone need more than four explain

 

[jtara]

Main advantage of 64bit processors is ability to address more than 4Gb of RAM.

That's just not true.

Whether or not it is the "main" advantage can be debated. But, what you are referring-to should more correctly be described as the ability to address more than 4GB of virtual address space. Whether or not there is 4GB or more or less of RAM is irrelevant. There are advantages to a larger address space, with or without RAM to match. You can have more than 4GB of RAM with a 32-bit processor, but it takes some OS support.

It's also rather irrelevant whether a given application might use <4G or >4GB. Again, both can be accomodated with either 32-bit or 64-bit architecture.

Educate yourself on virtual memory, and how it is used.

With 64-bit, you can "map" a file of any size (as a practical matter, anyway) into memory, for example. The application just treats it as memory. 64-bit allows applications and the OS to allocate and use address space as they see fit, without practical limitation.

 

[NoNothing]

Don't get it twisted.
The A7 64 bit architecture is currently faster due to changes in the pipeline and overall architecture. Currently there are no 64 bit apps, so you cannot demonstrate any improvement due to 64 bit.

So yes, it is marketing hype.
You don't need 64 bit integers in a mobile application. When you start moving large data sets around and you need memory pointers larger than 32 bits, it matters.

64 bit in desktop architectures mattered because you needed more than 4 GB of memory. Unless you use a windowing scheme, which is real inefficient (look at 286 and 386 processors) you can't access a bunch of memory.

So currently it's hype. In a year maybe not.

There are already 1000's of 64 BIT apps. In a few months, it will be 10's to 100's of thousands.

 

[turtlebud]

if the 64 bit processor does nothing, apple must have sprinkled some magical fairy dust on the 5s or did some good optimization in other areas:

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Appl...ared-to-top-Android-phones-benchmarks_id47739

 

[osofast240sx]

Can't argue with the comments. I am glad the A7 is 64bit, but currently it benefits nothing. In the future i think that will change though. Apple stating it gives a 2-4 time performance boost is admittedly incorrect. That is not to say the A7 isn't 2-4 times faster, it is just that the reason is not the 64bit architecture.

Not true

 

[buckdutter]

I love that people keep bringing up future proofing as if they will be using this phone when 64-bits is truly relevant in the mobile space (which is not now - even for performance). What iPhone will we be on before 64 bit actually is relevant to the mainstream? iPhone 7S? To be fair the same can be said about quad core mobile processors. There is absolutely no point.

Still you have to add it sometime, I just think it has been hyped up as a feature due to the rather limited amount of new features that they actually came out with this year (an unfortunate trend lately). To be fair though, Apple has never said that 64bit in and of itself is what makes it faster.