Posted on 09/11/2013 12:08:32 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
64-bit chip for iPhone 5S and iOS 7
In addition to the new 64-bit kernel iOS 7 as well as the iPhone 5S and the iPhone 5C, Apple has unveiled its new A7 SoC, which is actually the first consumer ARM-based SoC with 64-bit support.
According to Apple, the new A7 SoC consists of over 1 billion transistors on a 102mm2 die, which is actually twice what they had in the A6 chip. The chip will feature 64-bit desktop-class architecture with a modern instruction set, twice the amount of general-purpose and floating-point registers.
According to Apple, the new chip will be twice as fast as its predecessor, in both CPU and GPU performance. It also brings support for the OpenGL ES 3.0 that will be seen in the Infinity Blade III game launching alongside the iPhone 5S.
The iPhone 5S based on the new A7 SoC will be paired up with a secondary processor, the Apple M7 "Motion co-processor", which handles motion-sensing and motnitors data from the accelerometer, gyroscope and compass without draining the battery as heavily as well as offloading the main A7 SoC.
In any case, while everyone is talking about upcoming ARM's Cortex-A57 64-bit design, Apple has once again managed to come up on top of other manufacturers and be the first one to offer the first consumer smartphone ARM-based SoC with 64-bit supp
(Excerpt) Read more at fudzilla.com ...
The 64bit arch is basically so much marketing fluff. The only advantage to 64 bit is memory address space.
Some newer phones/tablets have 2 or 3 gig of ram, nowhere near the 4 gig limit of 32bit cpu's.
How many cores does this have ? Several newer mobile cpu's have 8 cores.
The new motorola moto-x has several auxilliary processors which the M7 is copying.
This is surely a fine product, just not the big splash the marketeers are pushing.
So you've got 16gb on your new thin and shiny laptop.
But this 32-bit app you're running to crank out a stupid accounting report you've come to reply upon needs 2.5gb to format an Excel workbook (after you added a couple of years to the time span), but the OS claims 2gb of the 4gb 32-bit address space. So, despite your capacious laptop, you are SOL until you obtain a 64-bit build of your app. Get googling! This, despite the fact that your app fits well within the resources of your laptop!
I'm sorry. That's a real problem, not a problem I would ascribe to marketing scum.
OK. So maybe the app should only need a few megabytes (likely). After all, storage does get out of hand quickly when you mix Java and XML and design patterns. But then the app would have to be reconceived and rewritten. That takes the mental bandwidth of an expensive human. How many times the cost of a shiny new 16gb laptop would it take to get it done?
Calling 64-bit marketing fluff is like the nitwit industry pundit who panned 16-bit processors in about 1980 because bytes were 8-bit and the most useful non-mainframe computer applications were word processing (pushing those 8-bit, non-Chinese characters around).
Having 64bit cpu's in todays mobile devices is superfluous and ignores many other factors that comprise the total capabilites of any cpu.
If you are doing 2.5gb excel spreadsheets on a iphone or ipad, you are really amazing.
Nope. You're just pushing the envelope a little.
Portability in computing devices is important! After all, just because I'm taking a dump, why should I interrupt my deep thought financial analysis? Think of the insights I could drill down to, while waiting for that second emetic wave!
Folks in the industry know this is true. That's why Apple feels compelled to demonstrate they are on it.
Samsung Shares More Technical Videos Explaining the Exynos 5 Octa-Core Advancements
Again I ask, how many cores in the A7?
Or you just love bloat. Really the only reason for 64 bits is so that processes use up more RAM and run slower.
To quote some young managers: "Sounds like a plan." /S
Dittos on your last two paragraphs. Liberal arts majors love to live in stupid luxury, one best way to get it is via strip mining a company and getting paid well for. Could be in stock options and other ways. They will exploit and sell out America via free trade as long as they can make good money doing so.
Washington DC is stacked with trade lawyers
wonk central
Apple's claim is that it is as good as, or better than, the A6 for power consumption.
I understand your post, but I think you are missing what I believe the intent of this thread was - to draw attention to the “rest of the story”... That being that Apple is making a big deal out of a new chip that is 64-bit, and could (by their statement - “desktop-class architecture” be a hint at bigger things coming. Could Apple be angling to go back to hands-on design of their own CPU’s for their entire product line? Remember, Apple moved away from ARM for their computer offerings (previously the result of Motorola + Apple partnership) because the ARM tech was not keeping up (particularly in the raw numbers category) with the Intel-type processors. Clock speeds and advances in general had slowed considerably with the PowerPC line, which led to marking issues, as well as parts availability (and cost) issues, and more. So Apple jumped to the Intel CPU and has done well with it.
BUT - it would be very Apple-like to jump back to their own proprietary chips. I’m not sure its a good idea (other than it sure would simplify OS and cross-device development in their product lines!
Still - I’m not sure I am thrilled with that idea. But it is definitely news and note-worthy.
If I recall my ancient history correctly, Apple abandoned the PowerPC partly because the manufacturers had slowed down deliveries to Apple in favor of DoD contracts.
The PowerPC processor was used in U.S smart weapons for years.
That is possible, though I was not aware of that factor. I do know that Jobs got frustrated with slow development -
It's not about spreadsheets, Quimby. It's about moving millions of pixels around in cutting edge games on 1080p video at high frame rates. . . and a 64 bit architecture can handle it more and faster. Plus, Apple has had those co-processing chips for some time and iOS is far more efficient than Android in how it runs in the hardware and in memory usage.
Lol, straight out of the apple press release. apple is playing catch up at this point, and at the rate they're moving, they'll never catch up.
Enjoy your candy colored phones and OS7, fanboy.
PS, the spreadsheet stuff was my response to another poster.
PPS Please dont tell me again to save my money and try to buy an apple refurb. I'm quite happy with my $100 android tablet.
Just what you always wanted: A malware botnet on Android devices. But you have to be really dumb to get infected.
I guess people like you need protection from this.
BTW can you access your file system on iOS? (File system, not files).
You are living in the past in an antique way of accessing and handling files. My files are on my computer at home, at my office, or on the cloud so that ALL my devices have access to them and to the latest revisions of them. I have terabytes of files available to me when I need them. Terabytes.
You obviously have no concept of how that works, do you? I can access AND control both my office and home computers from my iPhone or my iPad AND access and use any application on their desktops. You just be happy with your $100 fragmented Android tablet.
Oh, by the way, that botnet spread on Android with little user involvement:
Vaughan-Nichols reports, “If the user clicks on the link, a file named mms.apk, containing Opfake.a, is automatically loaded onto the smartphone or tablet. Then again, the user has to be a bit of an idiot and users run the downloaded program.”
Obviously, the users were idiots. They ran the downloaded program and added their phones and tablets to the botnet. "Gee, I wonder what this is?" Tap. Tap.
97% of mobile malware in the wild is on Android... The other 3% is for Symbian, Rimm, Windows, and "Jailbroken" iPhones. None in the wild is for iOS.
And, no, I don't need protection from this. I don't buy vulnerable junk. . . like people who think they have to have access to their file system do, just like the crooks who write malware.
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