iPhone 5S Packs Apple A7 Chip: World's First 64-bit Phone
Apple ups processing power in the iPhone 5S in a big way.
Apple just revealed the A7 chip that'll be inside each iPhone 5S device, which the company is boasting is the world's first 64-bit smartphone.
Among the claims are a 64-bit desktop-class architecture, modern instruction set, twice the number of general purpose and floating point registers. All of that comes to over 1 billion transistors packed in a 102mm2 die.
Apple also said that iOS 7 is completely reengineered for 64-bit with native kernel, libraries and drivers. All the built-in apps are reengineered, and developers will see a seamless transition.
The A7 chip is making some big performance claims over the A6. Apple says the A7 in the iPhone 5S is twice as fast as the A6 in the iPhone 5 and 5C.
- Apple Confirms iPhone 5C with 4-inch Retina Display and A6 SoC
- Apple Confirms iOS 7 to Launch September 18
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Will the device ever run more than 4GB of ram? Will it be executing instructions which require more than 32bits of accuracy? Well then you get a minor performance boost for a few 32bit instructions which can be combined into a single 64bit instruction, but are otherwise adding bloat to the OS.
Overall, probably a good thing in the long run because there will be a day when phones DO have 4+GB of ram, but it is not going to be the magic bullet that Apple will no doubt market it as.
Arm v8 (64-bit) has been around for a while...only at the server level...neat that Apple managed to get this into their custom chip.
Will the device ever run more than 4GB of ram? Will it be executing instructions which require more than 32bits of accuracy? Well then you get a minor performance boost for a few 32bit instructions which can be combined into a single 64bit instruction, but are otherwise adding bloat to the OS.
Overall, probably a good thing in the long run because there will be a day when phones DO have 4+GB of ram, but it is not going to be the magic bullet that Apple will no doubt market it as.
The fingerprint scanner...hopefully it works a bit better than android's face rec--I used face rec for a long time, but it became cumbersome to only work some of the time. Curious where the fingerprint goes...iCloud?
Well, I'm curious how the new hardware coupled with iOS 7 is going to push things. Will it mean more competition for Android (and possibly windows) platforms? Or is it just more of the same-old.
Also, I wonder how much the introduction of the 5C is going to impact market share, or if it'll just cannibalize their current established markets, where people opt for the cheaper version vs. the standard one.
I'm not familiar with the standard 64bit addition. Is it the 32bit instructions with 32 more instructions added (same instructions just extended to 64bit addressing) or do the original 32bit instructions get replaced with an always 64bit equivalent and the new 32bits of instructions add new functionality.
Hmm, the chances are slim, but I can see Apple making a bid to buy out AMD (completely or partially) for it's patent portfolio
(Just because the nokia has 41MP doesn't means the pictures will look better, things such as lighting, color saturation etc...... Take part in making a great picture, 41MP just means you can take a crappy picture and make high resoltion crap).
The secondary point of 64 bit is to allow it to work with larger numbers in 1 step, instead of taking multiple steps. Not really necessary at all for phones. But it has to happen sooner or later.
There is a downside to moving to 64 bit processors tho. All pointers need to use 64 bits instead of 32 bits even if you dont need the extra precision or dont want to use >4gig of ram. That means all pointers double in memory usage. If you use native 64 bit integers instead of 32 bit ones, again you double the memory footprint.
An application recompiled for 64 bit code will have a larger memory footprint, even if it doesnt make any use of the 64 bit instructions. 20% or 30% inst uncommon. So you must add more memory just to keep the status quo.
The iphone5 only has 0.5 or 1 gig of memory, and moving to 64 bit on that would be suicide. If its anything less then 2 gig be worried.
LOL, marketing scam until Samsung comes out with a 64-bit chip and then you'll be like: OMG, gurrrrrl!!!
Please, at least be a little less transparent.
Moving to 64-bits is a good thing - especially since the Sammy Note 3 has 3GB of RAM, we're gonna hit the 4GB of RAM ceiling in a year or two...
LMAO, how about figuring out what you "dropped" in your pampers, cupcake. When Sammy delivers a 64-bit chip, you're gonna be like OMG THE BESTEST.
At least try to be somewhat transparent, we'll get 64-bit Android sometime... Wait, not with 4.4 we're not, maybe 5.0 and then it will take 15 years to roll out... LMAO
the Iphone is a closed system, yeah one day it will have 4gb of ram but what the hell is the point in adding it until then? its not like you can upgrade the ram in your iphone at a later date.
I doubt samsung or any Android retailer will bother with a 64bit OS until the actually add 4gb of ram to something. Yeah there probably is a slight performance boost even without the added ram but i dont see it being major. It really is a gimmick