64bit..... hogwash??

Trimlock said:
I'm not aware of any marketing Apple uses to point out the 64 bit processor. If it's intended for marketing, is a fairly dumb idea to spend that much on r&d just to tagline it.
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Apple does hype the 64-bit nature a bit on product pages, but I agree that the company likely didn't revolve its plans around that kind of upgrade. Most likely, it saw that the next step up in its CPU architecture meant ARMv8, with 64-bit as a logical extension.

Besides, if folks think Apple is overselling 64-bit, just wait until Samsung launches its first 64-bit phone... you'll never hear the end of it.
 
QwertyJuan said:
I didn't just put a lot of work into a thread... I actually put a lot of work into this period. Probably 5-6 hours of my time. I had to prove to myself that 32bit and 64bit don't make a difference whatsoever for the average user. And I did just that. ;)
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Yup, just like all great research begins with something to prove- oh, wait- we call that confirmation bias. Oh well.
 
Add Nvidia to the 64bit bandwagon. Is it hogwash if everyone ends up doing it? Qualcomm only threw up a stink at first because they weren't ready for 64bit now they are embracing it.
 
elzeus said:
Add Nvidia to the 64bit bandwagon. Is it hogwash if everyone ends up doing it? Qualcomm only threw up a stink at first because they weren't ready for 64bit now they are embracing it.
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I'm not saying it IS hogwash... it just APPEARS to be based on doing light duty things on my two identical machines running Windows 7. I just can't see it being ANY different on the iPhone 5s.
 
wonderfield said:
"Note" makes no sense in that sentence.
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I realize that. I was merely trying to be silly. :p

I see however that you avoided the second sentence entirely. Do some testing of 32bit and 64bit with identical systems AND with less than 4gb of ram and tell me the 64bit is faster.
 
Try looking ahead a few years to what might may be. Microsoft is getting ready to take the tablet market by storm with cheap ($200-300) options with an operating system that works best on a tablet like device that can do anything your laptop/desktop can do (obviously not super fast, but capable).

Android tablet market share will go down fast and Apples a bit slower. What is Apple to do? Merge OSX with iOS. Giving you a desktop operating system with a shit ton of apps that are available from iOS with the multi-tasking features from OSX...sprinkle in some stylus support and you can sell millions of more devices to people who are used to paying more of a premium for their devices compared to the $200-300 lower end devices. With all that multi-tasking stuff and 4k res coming up you will need tons of ram...why wait until you launch your next flagship device to try out 64-bit support when you can iron out the kinks a few years in advance.
 
QwertyJuan said:
I am pretty sure Gimp and Google Earth are 64bit, but even then I noticed virtually no difference. What programs should I try next to see?
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Noticed or tested and by tested done multiple runs to remove margin of error, and how did you "time" these experiments... to be precise....
 
QwertyJuan said:
I see however that you avoided the second sentence entirely. Do some testing of 32bit and 64bit with identical systems AND with less than 4gb of ram and tell me the 64bit is faster.
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I ignored it because I really have no interest in doing that. I really don't have a dog in this fight.

You seem interested disproving Apple marketing, but don't have the knowledge nor the capacity to develop a relevant test suite (your first post is evidence of this). Why is the onus on me — or anyone else — to do it for you?
 
wonderfield said:
I ignored it because I really have no interest in doing that. I really don't have a dog in this fight.

You seem interested disproving Apple marketing, but don't have the knowledge nor the capacity to develop a relevant test suite (your first post is evidence of this). Why is the onus on me — or anyone else — to do it for you?
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Impressive rebuttal! Let me guess.... iPhone user?
 
QwertyJuan said:
Really?? Where did he get the 32bit iPhone 5s he used in his testing?
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you've got to be kidding... The benchmark was compared through software. One was written and compiled for A32 and the other A64. AnandTech ran both on the same hardware. That's how you test...

Sure, you can claim that AnandTech or Geekbench deliberately handicapped the phone in the A32 run. Stupid conspiracy theorists... But proving that will be on your court.
 
CHANG3D said:
you've got to be kidding... The benchmark was compared through software. One was written and compiled for A32 and the other A64. AnandTech ran both on the same hardware. That's how you test...

Sure, you can claim that AnandTech or Geekbench deliberately handicapped the phone in the A32 run. Stupid conspiracy theorists... But proving that will be on your court.
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You are right! Wasn't thinking straight when I posted that. Sorry.

I am going to be running some CPU intensive tests on both machines today or tomorrow and going to video it. I don't personally care about "theoretical" speeds... I want to see if the average user can tell the difference between 32 and 64bit. If not, then IMO it's a buzzword.
 
QwertyJuan said:
iPhone users tend to get their feathers ruffled up quite badly when ANYTHING is said about their phone that doesn't line up with what the marketing people tell them. Other than that, no.
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Hmm. I see more Android users "defending" their purchases. I have like 5x as much RAM as you and 2 more giganerds!! ;)
 
QwertyJuan said:
iPhone users tend to get their feathers ruffled up quite badly when ANYTHING is said about their phone that doesn't line up with what the marketing people tell them. Other than that, no.
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Can we please stop with the stereotypes? Especially since that's true of other major platforms. I've seen Android users who lash out when you show that Google isn't a utopia of openness and honest patent use, while some Windows Phone users will get antsy if you remind them that the app deficit is still a real problem. The truth is that many people get overly attached to a preferred OS, and put the blinders on.
 
QwertyJuan said:
I want to see if the average user can tell the difference between 32 and 64bit. If not, then IMO it's a buzzword.
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"Desktop-class architecture" (which Apple uses to describe the A7) is a buzzword. It doesn't mean anything. 64-bit is an actual architectural difference.

Suggesting that it's a buzzword is akin to suggesting that "8GB RAM" is a buzzword. It makes no sense.

QwertyJuan said:
iPhone users tend to get their feathers ruffled up quite badly when ANYTHING is said about their phone that doesn't line up with what the marketing people tell them.
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Your feathers appear to have been so ruffled that you spent six hours attempting to disprove Apple's claims. My feathers are ruffled only enough to post in a thread about it.

Of the two of us, who appears to be more emotionally invested?
 
This is just to ease the transition in the future, much like Windows 2000 had a 64bit version for testing.
 
xIronCrossx said:
Hmm. I see more Android users "defending" their purchases. I have like 5x as much RAM as you and 2 more giganerds!! ;)
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FYI - I own an iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and a Nexus 7... I have WAY more invested in the Apple Ecosystem actually. I just can't get over in how many different forums people go on and on about how much faster the iPhone 5s is than the S4/One/Note3/etc... BECAUSE it's 64bit and not because it's a year newer chip and just plain faster.
 
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QwertyJuan said:
FYI - I own an iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and a Nexus 7... I have WAY more invested in the Apple Ecosystem actually. I just can't get over in how many different forums people go on and on about how much faster the iPhone 5s is than the S4/One/Note3/etc... BECAUSE it's 64bit and not because it's a year old newer chip and just plain faster.
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Oh no worries, I get bothered by people like that too. I feel like if you have to justify yourself over a phone purchase, you have some kind of small penis syndrome going on. :p
 
CHANG3D said:
you've got to be kidding... The benchmark was compared through software. One was written and compiled for A32 and the other A64. AnandTech ran both on the same hardware. That's how you test...

Sure, you can claim that AnandTech or Geekbench deliberately handicapped the phone in the A32 run. Stupid conspiracy theorists... But proving that will be on your court.
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A64 was faster, but crucially 64-bit is *far* from the only (or even biggest) difference between A32 and A64.

The majority of the time 64-bit will be slightly slower than 32-bit. Most of the time the extra 32-bits are entirely unused and as a result are just wasted RAM, cache space, and bandwidth. But we're also talking very, very small differences either way. Really the only time 64-bit matters is if you want to use more than 4GB of RAM *OR* if you deal with large memory mapped files. Computationally-bound apps are using things like NEON (or even GPU compute)

So why did Apple switch to 64-bit? And why is the A7 benchmarking so well? Quite simply because ARMv8 brought all sorts of *other* changes that are oh so very worth it. Increased register counts, wider NEON registers, double-precision NEON, hardware AES encryption/decryption, etc... None of that has anything to do with 64-bit, it just comes as part of the A64 instruction set in ARMv8. Having a huge virtual memory space also helps with things like ASLR.
 
pretty sure when the A7 runs A32 software, it doesn't magically revert back to ARMv7 hardware... This is how ARMv8 instructions defer from the past designs.

ARMv8-improvements_940x671.jpg
 
kllrnohj said:
A64 was faster, but crucially 64-bit is *far* from the only (or even biggest) difference between A32 and A64.

The majority of the time 64-bit will be slightly slower than 32-bit. Most of the time the extra 32-bits are entirely unused and as a result are just wasted RAM, cache space, and bandwidth. But we're also talking very, very small differences either way. Really the only time 64-bit matters is if you want to use more than 4GB of RAM *OR* if you deal with large memory mapped files. Computationally-bound apps are using things like NEON (or even GPU compute)

So why did Apple switch to 64-bit? And why is the A7 benchmarking so well? Quite simply because ARMv8 brought all sorts of *other* changes that are oh so very worth it. Increased register counts, wider NEON registers, double-precision NEON, hardware AES encryption/decryption, etc... None of that has anything to do with 64-bit, it just comes as part of the A64 instruction set in ARMv8. Having a huge virtual memory space also helps with things like ASLR.
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Thank you sir!! :)
 
wonderfield said:
The extra 32 bits of...what?
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The upper 32-bits of the 64-bit registers. They will just be filled with 0s or ignored.

Since int is still 32-bit on iOS even when compiling for A64, the only time 99% of apps will ever even use a 64-bit instruction is for pointers.

CHANG3D said:
pretty sure when the A7 runs A32 software, it doesn't magically revert back to ARMv7 hardware... This is how ARMv8 instructions defer from the past designs.
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Well, it actually kind of does. Only A64 got the new stuff, not A32. A32 is just a renaming of the ARMv7 instruction set. Obviously the hardware doesn't change, but the hardware changes are meaningless without the instruction set to actually use it.

These are independent of AArch32/AArch64 btw, which is different from A32/A64.

Here's the ARM PDF that slide is pulled from: http://www.arm.com/files/downloads/ARMv8_Architecture.pdf

In particular note that the new stuff is all tied to A64, not ARMv8 in general.
 
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I do NOT have time to post videos, but just zipped and unzipped 6GB of misc files via 32 and 64 bit versions of 7zip. Absolutely NO difference.

I then did some rendering in Gimp 32 vs 64bit version and same thing... NO difference. Exact same length of time.

Then I played with Opera 32 and 64 bit, and overall Opera 64bit is SLOWER than 32 bit.... definitely lag shown that the 32bit doesn't have.

You can take that however you will, but my testing is done... I am not going to waste anymore time on this, but no difference in ANY testing that I have done.
 
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64 bit advantage is mainly the increased amount of ram it can access. Nice for applications that consume large amounts of it. Not a big deal for pretty much everything else (and nothing on a phone I can think of).
 
64 bit by itself has no tangible or measurable benefits in the mobile space today. Think of it as the inevitable marching forward of technology, and just like IPv6, its the way forward, and there's no reason to stick to 32 bit, and its even worth paying a small storage/perf penalty to move to the newer architecture. Newer tech brings a host of other benefits as well not related to the doubling.

Now, can you really expect a marketing based company like Apple not to hype and exploit any possible buzzword? No. They will milk it for all that its worth.

In 1 year when all flagship phones have 4+ GB, it will be usable by all. And codebases will be unified, 32 bits will truly be dead.
 
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