Qualcomm: Apple’s 64-bit Processor Is A ‘Gimmick’

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Qualcomm's Anand Chandrasekher doesn't seem very impressed with Apple's 64-bit processor calling it "a marketing gimmick."

"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."
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he is right unless apple is going to be putting more then 8GB of ram in there ipad and iphone soon
 
Of course its a gimmick. That has never stopped every press outlet/blog to declare everything Apple does as the 2nd coming.
 
seems history keeps repeating itself. We'll never need more than a 10 gig hard drive either, right? dude needs to shut his mouth - not just on Apple's behalf, but on behalf of technology in the present and in the future.
 
well at some point sure youll need it if you want more then 8GB of ram in your ipad
but i dont see them offering that any time soon

the big win with 64bit is how much ram and hardware you can address not some thing that nearly as needed in a tablet right now
Apple just wants to say they are first
 
To be fair... AMD/Intel had 64bit processors before it was viable too.

Yeah you had an option to take advantage but most did not and didn't need to either.
 
eh the Athlon 64 was fucking speed boat compared to the P4 at the time
even the A64 X2 beat the crap out of the Pentium D
so it wasnt just 64bit that made it better even in 32bit more it was a HUGE speed bump from the Athlon XP line
 
Why is it surprising that he is saying that 64 bit is useless? His company doesn't make 64 bit chips so of course they will say 64 bit is useless.
 
Spazturtle said:
Why is it surprising that he is saying that 64 bit is useless? His company doesn't make 64 bit chips so of course they will say 64 bit is useless.
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right now on a phone or table it kinda is since the only thing it gets you on that format is >8GB of ram which is still 3-4 years out
the A7 is not the huge speed bump from the A6 that say the Athlon 64 for was from the Althlon XP
 
dandirk said:
To be fair... AMD/Intel had 64bit processors before it was viable too.

Yeah you had an option to take advantage but most did not and didn't need to either.
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This. Most new tech starts out as a "gimmick". I had a 64-bit CPU in my desktop years before I went over 4GB of RAM. Just another company trying to get their name in the papers by hating on Apple.
 
Elios said:
right now on a phone or table it kinda is since the only thing it gets you on that format is >8GB of ram which is still 3-4 years out
the A7 is not the huge speed bump from the A6 that say the Athlon 64 for was from the Althlon XP
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You are confusing 64bit CPUs with 64bit addressing.

It is 64bit addressing that allows you to use large amounts of RAM.

64bit CPUs let the CPU deal with larger number (twice as big as 32bit) so they can do bigger calculations.
 
64 bit *IS* useless unless you need that for one of two things, greater memory space and better mathematical computational efficiency. Neither one of which is needed in a damn phone.

Now in a desktop PC, there IS a need for more ram (running 16G in my home machine, building another with 32G). And if you do heavy duty engineering or other types of computer work that need to do crazy amounts of math, then 64 bit is good.

Otherwise, those transistors would be better used to make the base 32 bit device faster (like more on chip cache, for example).

Hell, even most modern software doesn't efficiently use the multiple cores we have NOW, much less the bigger badder processors coming out now.

As the OP stated, this is purely a marketing "we got there first" ploy.
 
Of course it's pointless now but in 4 - 6 years (the typical lifespan of iPhones), who knows. Remember, Apple is still selling 3 generations of iPhones. My guess is that every Apple device, from the 5s forward, will have a 64-bit processor included. Thus, in 4 or 6 years from now, most of the software on the market can be coded to take advantage of the additional memory space. At some point, Android and Windows phones will have to release with 64-bit processors to remain competitive.
 
Spazturtle said:
64bit CPUs let the CPU deal with larger number (twice as big as 32bit) so they can do bigger calculations.
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Apart from calculating the first 900 billion digits of Pi on your phone....is there any forseeable need for this, on a phone?
 
who cares. the A7 is faster than whatever qualcomm is putting out.
Of course qcom is going to shit on it.

we can never have too much memory or disk space, or battery life. more more more!!
 
There is one benefit, with 64-bit you get a larger virtual address space, and so you can use this to increase the security of ASLR (address space layout randomization). With 32-bit, you can heap-spray to exploit a program, but this is not really practical on 64-bit. In layman's terms, it greatly increases the strength of a very useful security feature. And eventually even phones will have > 4GBs of RAM, can't really see why not get it done ahead of time especially with the security benefit already mentioned.
 
I'll agree with 64bit is useless for consumers currently on that platform. But devs will eventually take advantage of 64bit for future apps.

64bit CPUs have been around for years for desktops but (at least) I still use many 32bit apps. Transitioning takes years and it starts with the foundation to develop on.
 
Is IOS7 64bit? If it isn't then yes, it 64bit on iPhone is a gimmick.
 
I heard that your Instagram photos will look even better since it's 64-bit.
 
He's an idiot. It's not so much a direct advantage for the customers, but Apple is getting practice for developing 64-bit code for the future. By the time it does present an advantage for end users (when phones use more than 8GB of memory) then Apple won't have to spend a ton of time trying to play catch up, and suffer the delays other companies will have.

The change is coming, there is no doubt in that. How soon is up in the air, but it is inevitable. Those who don't prepare for the future as caught flat footed and lose their pace. Companies that do that frequently fail, as was the case with RIM/Blackberry, Nokia, Kodak, Sun, Yahoo, Sony, Blockbuster, etc.
 
there is an advantage, lot of 64bit chips will run math code that it could faster even though the code is 32 bit. it wont be mind bending speed increase but still a small increase.


too bad apple didnt just try doing 128 bit processor first.
 
I think it's a good idea to go 64 bit and future proof stuff but at same time I really don't think this should be a selling feature. IMO everything should be 64-bit now days, it's annoying that in the PC/Windows world we are still stuck in a transition where lot of stuff does not work well in 64-bit and it's just an after thought/beta thing. For phones it's really not needed though but still does not hurt assuming there is not extra cost. (financial, battery, etc)

We still need to get the phone companies to upgrade their towers to 64 bit before 64 bit phone calls can be made anyway.
 
Elios said:
he is right unless apple is going to be putting more then 8GB of ram in there ipad and iphone soon
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Elios said:
well at some point sure youll need it if you want more then 8GB of ram in your ipad
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Elios said:
right now on a phone or table it kinda is since the only thing it gets you on that format is >8GB of ram which is still 3-4 years out
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Why do you keep saying 8GB? 32bit memory addressing only allows 4GB. You need 64bit memory addressing to be able to use more than 4GB of RAM.
 
Doesn't matter if it's gimmick now, because eventually it will become useful. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a Apple laptop with an A7 in it with more then 8 gigs of ram in the works.
 
It's a nice mobile processor, regardless of this guys claims. I'm liking what I see from the latest Qualcomm chips, too.
 
Apple is marketing its 64-bit processor because A) it's the first of its kind in a smartphone, which is notable and B) Apple doesn't really have all that much else to market for the 5s in terms of how it differentiates from its predecessor.

That's not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion, as s-model iPhones are primarily about performance. When you have a phone that's supposed to be about performance, talking about its virtues that help it get higher performance is completely reasonable thing.

When Qualcomm has a 64-bit part, this very same person will be extolling the virtues of 64-bit addressing.
 
Spazturtle said:
You are confusing 64bit CPUs with 64bit addressing.

It is 64bit addressing that allows you to use large amounts of RAM.

64bit CPUs let the CPU deal with larger number (twice as big as 32bit) so they can do bigger calculations.
Click to expand...
Are you sure you understand what a 64-bit CPU is? Also, a 64-bit value is not twice as big as a 32-bit value.
 
I read somewhere about the benefits of 64 bit procs besides just the increased ram and efficiency which aren't really necessary at this time. I believe Anand wrote about the procs having twice the amount of registers and some other stuff. Im not knowledgable in the intricacies of processors but Anand is and he seems to think that the extra registers and other stuff that is added when going 64 bit makes a pretty big difference in performance/ capability. Of course iI would not put it past apple to try to attribute all the gains to the fact that this new proc is 64-bit capable.
One thing that bothers me. You are telling me that the slow-mo video and the burst mode of the 5s's camera would not work on previous generation hardware?
 
Bling said:
I read somewhere about the benefits of 64 bit procs besides just the increased ram and efficiency which aren't really necessary at this time. I believe Anand wrote about the procs having twice the amount of registers and some other stuff. Im not knowledgable in the intricacies of processors but Anand is and he seems to think that the extra registers and other stuff that is added when going 64 bit makes a pretty big difference in performance/ capability. Of course iI would not put it past apple to try to attribute all the gains to the fact that this new proc is 64-bit capable.
One thing that bothers me. You are telling me that the slow-mo video and the burst mode of the 5s's camera would not work on previous generation hardware?
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More registers on 64-bit may be architecture specific. 32-bit x86 was pretty register starved, so doubling the registers was a big deal. I'm not sure if 64-bit arm added more registers... 32-bit arm probably already had a bunch.
 
There is a sizeable performance increase because arm64 is more than just doubling the registers. You get improved SIMD throughput and support for accelerating doubles for the first time. You also get guaranteed cryptography acceleration. And since Apple owns both the platform and processor, they can easily recompile everything to take advantage.
 
remember when 64 bit came to the consumer space in 2003 ..when 2 gig was rare.

The majority opinion was that it is not needed. I went 64 bit anyways ...and about 2 years later it started to catch on a bit more . At that time .. the survey pointed to no benefit in games ...and games only used a max of 2 gigs anyway. And now ... some 10 years later, 64 bit it is pretty much a standard for the main reason that you can go beyond 3.2 gig of visible ram. There is no other performance benefits for the mainstream consumer. So, it is a bit funny to see people lauding 64 bit more than they ever did when it came out for the PC. And the only difference I can see is that it is apple.

It will be useful when the memory is there. ANd by having 64 bit now.. maybe that will encourage faster adoption of energy efficient ram. So soon enough tablets will not be so handicapped vs a regular PC :) chicken and the egg :))
 
Teenk9 said:
Is IOS7 64bit? If it isn't then yes, it 64bit on iPhone is a gimmick.
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It is, down to the core. Right now it shows tangible benefits, but are most likely unseen but the user as a whole.

LeninGHOLA said:
It's a nice mobile processor, regardless of this guys claims. I'm liking what I see from the latest Qualcomm chips, too.
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Both are great at what they do and both create their SoC's using the same method's too.
 
Bling said:
One thing that bothers me. You are telling me that the slow-mo video and the burst mode of the 5s's camera would not work on previous generation hardware?
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Its a hardware feature on the GPU that it needs to support. The GPU on the 5 doesn't support it, but the GPU on the A7 and the S800 both support these modes.
 
defaultluser said:
There is a sizeable performance increase because arm64 is more than just doubling the registers. You get improved SIMD throughput and support for accelerating doubles for the first time. You also get guaranteed cryptography acceleration. And since Apple owns both the platform and processor, they can easily recompile everything to take advantage.
Click to expand...

Additionally, it allows for 64-bit instructions which perform particularly well with media operations, a place mobile actually handles a lot more thickly these days than once anticipated. The memory space issue isn't really a factor...it was on PC's for entirely different reasons (things were much more likely to be memory-starved when branch predication and memory use was far poorer...people forget the pre-DMA days, for example...and raw speeds/latencies of storage was an order of magnitude slower). Honestly it blows my mind that people see 64-bit and immediately think "useless for a phone" and "only good for >4 GB of memory" when they are actually contradictory statements.
 
RedStarSQD said:
remember when 64 bit came to the consumer space in 2003 ..when 2 gig was rare.

The majority opinion was that it is not needed. I went 64 bit anyways ...and about 2 years later it started to catch on a bit more . At that time .. the survey pointed to no benefit in games ...and games only used a max of 2 gigs anyway. And now ... some 10 years later, 64 bit it is pretty much a standard for the main reason that you can go beyond 3.2 gig of visible ram. There is no other performance benefits for the mainstream consumer. So, it is a bit funny to see people lauding 64 bit more than they ever did when it came out for the PC. And the only difference I can see is that it is apple.

It will be useful when the memory is there. ANd by having 64 bit now.. maybe that will encourage faster adoption of energy efficient ram. So soon enough tablets will not be so handicapped vs a regular PC :) chicken and the egg :))
Click to expand...

10 years later and 99% of applications that consumers use do not require a 64 bit process. Most games are still using under 2gb of memory. Etc.

64 bit on mobile devices needs to find a supreme niche to be relevant
 
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