iPhone 5s launch expected to boost Apple's gross margins to nearly 40%

124

Comments

  • Reply 61 of 81
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    sog35 wrote: »
    i'm starting to like your style

    what did he say?  I don't understand his point.  He said 64bit has little benefit if all things are equal.

    No i was quoting from the post you linked to on that. You should take your concerns up with Mike Ash.
  • Reply 62 of 81
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post





    No i was quoting from the post you linked to on that. You should take your concerns up with Mike Ash.

     

    I was actually going to use the same quote... but originally I decided I didn't have a dog in this fight. I don't know enough  about chip architecture. (aka 'nothing')

  • Reply 63 of 81
    JamesMac is a troll?  lol

    C'mon. Get off it.

    OK. Then you explain after: days of proven expert research, white papers, and impressive RESULTS from the big name game developers all over the place, why JamesMac clings to his belief that his view is superior.

    I have absolutely NO patience for people that can't even use a search engine and just go spouting their uneducated beliefs. :devil:

    I am NOT an engineer, but have also been a Mac user and overall tech enthusiast for some 30+ years. When this topic (64bit) first came up the day after the preso, I Googled... I read.. and I formed a pretty solid opinion of "wait and see", because 64bit is even stated in the Wiki entry as NOT being only for memory management over 4gb (I posted that link here even!). Mainly, that there are other advantages to going 64bit, like the registers being larger and "possibly" being more efficient.

    Going 64bit seems to fit the Apple mold, OS philosophy and modus operandi to a "T", wouldn't ya say? Apple has through there history been able to do more and faster with less hardware thrown at their software. Why do you think that is? It's tweaking and pulling every last watt out of their processors, motherboard designs, cache arrays... whatever it takes to squeeze everything out of the hardware by optimizing the software.

    IF JamesMac IS telling the truth about working for 2 of the largest tech companies ever... that would make one of them suspiciously and probably Microsoft. Well what can we say to that, other than: NOPE... he doesn't get it, because the whole company is devoid of anyone that does. The rollout to 64bit was a mess, and building anything on top of that woefully backwards NT kernel is going to strangle them eventually.

    So last but not least: I'm still sticking to my assessment that JamesMac is a troll for a) remaining intentionally stupid on the matter and b) trying to wiggle his way out with his unproven resumé and against all other expert testimony and actual usage by dev's seeing the results before their very eyes.

    Or should we just chalk up all those killer results and reports coming to light, to Fairy Dust, Unicorn Piss... or the "Reality Distortion Field" cloud hovering over Apple HQ? :no:
  • Reply 64 of 81
    jamesmac wrote: »
    sog, unfortunately you're one of the people on this forum who understands the least, but doesn't seem to know it.  

    Can you please clearly articulate why you believe a 64 bit processor is preferable to a 32 bit processor?  Also be interested to hear your views on RISC vs. CISC processors. 

    Why should Sog35 or anyone else have to explain their position, when you can also do the reading yourself and discover why you're not as smart about the subject as you think you are? Troll!
  • Reply 65 of 81
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc View Post





    OK. Then you explain after: days of proven expert research, white papers, and impressive RESULTS from the big name game developers all over the place, why JamesMac clings to his belief that his view is superior.



    I have absolutely NO patience for people that can't even use a search engine and just go spouting their uneducated beliefs. image



    I am NOT an engineer, but have also been a Mac user and overall tech enthusiast for some 30+ years. When this topic (64bit) first came up the day after the preso, I Googled... I read.. and I formed a pretty solid opinion of "wait and see", because 64bit is even stated in the Wiki entry as NOT being only for memory management over 4gb (I posted that link here even!). Mainly, that there are other advantages to going 64bit, like the registers being larger and "possibly" being more efficient.



    Going 64bit seems to fit the Apple mold, OS philosophy and modus operandi to a "T", wouldn't ya say? Apple has through there history been able to do more and faster with less hardware thrown at their software. Why do you think that is? It's tweaking and pulling every last watt out of their processors, motherboard designs, cache arrays... whatever it takes to squeeze everything out of the hardware by optimizing the software.



    IF JamesMac IS telling the truth about working for 2 of the largest tech companies ever... that would make one of them suspiciously and probably Microsoft. Well what can we say to that, other than: NOPE... he doesn't get it, because the whole company is devoid of anyone that does. The rollout to 64bit was a mess, and building anything on top of that woefully backwards NT kernel is going to strangle them eventually.



    So last but not least: I'm still sticking to my assessment that JamesMac is a troll for a) remaining intentionally stupid on the matter and b) trying to wiggle his way out with his unproven resumé and against all other expert testimony and actual usage by dev's seeing the results before their very eyes.



    Or should we just chalk up all those killer results and reports coming to light, to Fairy Dust, Unicorn Piss... or the "Reality Distortion Field" cloud hovering over Apple HQ? image

     

    Look, pal, you might think you've got it all wrapped up, but I read all of JamesMac's posts up until you called him a troll and, basically, almost everything he says is backed up in a lot of the material that you have claimed to have read.

     

    Is 64 bit a fantastic piece of engineering? Yes.

     

    Is it absolutely necessary for the operation of the iPhone 5s? No.

     

    Is it good marketing to be the first to introduce a 64 bit chip? Yes.

     

    Will 64 bit be of larger benefit in the future? Yes.

  • Reply 66 of 81
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc View Post

    Troll!

     

    I think you’re going a touch overboard.

    ? This guy thinks that. <img class=" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />

    Anyway, a simply copy paste from Wikipedia’ll take care of that.

    Quote:

    Pros and cons

    A common misconception is that 64-bit architectures are no better than 32-bit architectures unless the computer has more than 4 GB of random access memory.[26] This is not entirely true:


    • Some operating systems and certain hardware configurations limit the physical memory space to 3 GB on IA-32 systems, due to much of the 3–4 GB region being reserved for hardware addressing; see 3 GB barrier; 64-bit architectures can address far more than 4 GB. However, IA-32 processors from the Pentium II onwards allow for a 36-bit physical memory address space, using Physical Address Extension (PAE), which gives a 64 GB physical address range, of which up to 62 GB may be used by main memory; operating systems that support PAE may not be limited to 4GB of physical memory, even on IA-32 processors. However, drivers and other kernel mode software, particularly older versions, may not be compatible with PAE.


    • Some operating systems reserve portions of process address space for OS use, effectively reducing the total address space available for mapping memory for user programs. For instance, 32-bit Windows reserves 1 or 2 GB (depending on the settings) of the total address space for the kernel, which leaves only 3 or 2 GB (respectively) of the address space available for user mode. This limit is much higher on 64-bit operating systems.


    • Memory-mapped files are becoming more difficult to implement in 32-bit architectures as files of over 4 GB become more common; such large files cannot be memory-mapped easily to 32-bit architectures—only part of the file can be mapped into the address space at a time, and to access such a file by memory mapping, the parts mapped must be swapped into and out of the address space as needed. This is a problem, as memory mapping, if properly implemented by the OS, is one of the most efficient disk-to-memory methods.


    • Some 64-bit programs, such as encoders, decoders and encryption software, can benefit greatly from 64-bit registers, while the performance of other programs, such as 3D graphics-oriented ones, remains unaffected when switching from a 32-bit to a 64-bit environment.


    • Some 64-bit architectures, such as x86-64, support more general-purpose registers than their 32-bit counterparts (although this is not due specifically to the word length). This leads to a significant speed increase for tight loops since the processor does not have to fetch data from the cache or main memory if the data can fit in the available registers.

    Example in C:



    int a, b, c, d, e;
    for (a=0; a<100; a++)
    {
    b = a;
    c = b;
    d = c;
    e = d;
    }

    If a processor only has the ability to keep two or three values or variables in registers it would need to move some values between memory and registers to be able to process variables d and e as well; this is a process that takes many CPU cycles. A processor that is capable of holding all values and variables in registers can loop through them without needing to move data between registers and memory for each iteration. This behavior can easily be compared with virtual memory, although any effects are contingent upon the compiler.

    The main disadvantage of 64-bit architectures is that, relative to 32-bit architectures, the same data occupies more space in memory (due to longer pointers and possibly other types, and alignment padding). This increases the memory requirements of a given process and can have implications for efficient processor cache utilization. Maintaining a partial 32-bit model is one way to handle this, and is in general reasonably effective. For example, thez/OS operating system takes this approach, requiring program code to reside in 31-bit address spaces (the high order bit is not used in address calculation on the underlying hardware platform) while data objects can optionally reside in 64-bit regions.

    As of June 2011, most proprietary x86 software is compiled into 32-bit code, with less being also compiled into 64-bit code (although the trend is rapidly equalizing[citation needed]), so most of that software does not take advantage of the larger 64-bit address space or wider 64-bit registers and data paths on x64 processors, or the additional general-purpose registers. However, users of most RISC platforms, and users of free or open source operating systems (where the source code is available for recompiling with a 64-bit compiler) have been able to use exclusive 64-bit computing environments for years. Not all such applications require a large address space or manipulate 64-bit data items, so these applications do not benefit from these features. The main advantage of 64-bit versions of such applications is the ability to access more registers in the x86-64 architecture.


     

    “But… Wikipedia!” So prove the above wrong with your own sources. We’ll wait.

  • Reply 67 of 81
    thepixeldocthepixeldoc Posts: 2,257member
    @asdasd, @JamesMac and all of the other "all things being equal" crowd:

    Question: if you were making the decisions at Apple, and you "could" put a 64bit chip into a device, and already get the SDK and core frameworks ready for the next wave of software and devices... and introduce it to your devs TODAY.... would ya do it?

    What IF the benefits were only 2% across the board today, with the rest of the optimization and advantages coming over the next 5 years... exponentially increasing from update to update... would ya do it? Or would ya pass on the risk that people would call your advance a "marketing gimmick"?

    We can discuss these things here all frickin' day... but the idea that ANYONE on this board knows the 5-year roadmap at Apple... and is smarter collectively than the engineers at Apple... all I can do is go: :no:
  • Reply 68 of 81
    thepixeldocthepixeldoc Posts: 2,257member
    I think you’re going a touch overboard.
    [SIZE=26px]?[/SIZE] This guy thinks that. :lol:
    Anyway, a simply copy paste from Wikipedia’ll take care of that.

    “But… Wikipedia!” So prove the above wrong with your own sources. We’ll wait.

    Huh? That was from my post. What's there to prove on my part? Not an engineer as I said, but my math, physics and tech is up to snuff to understand and assess that it's probably not far from the scientific truth of the matter... "all things NOT being equal"... like "everything" you read at Wikipedia is the truth. It's a 'living encyclopedia" for dawgs sake! That's why my "opinion' was wait and see.

    As for JamesMac being a troll: I've been led to believe that trolls come in all shapes, sizes and intellect. Being intentionally stupid and pompous to boot... in order to hijack a forum thread, I believe can be defined as belonging to the Troll Nation i.e. Trollinistas baby! Watch out! :smokey:
  • Reply 69 of 81
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc View Post





    Huh? That was from my post. What's there to prove on my part? Not an engineer as I said, but my math, physics and tech is up to snuff to understand and assess that it's probably not far from the scientific truth of the matter... "all things NOT being equal"... like "everything" you read at Wikipedia is the truth. It's a 'living encyclopedia" for dawgs sake! That's why my "opinion' was wait and see.



    As for JamesMac being a troll: I've been led to believe that trolls come in all shapes, sizes and intellect. Being intentionally stupid and pompous to boot... in order to hijack a forum thread, I believe can be defined as belonging to the Troll Nation i.e. Trollinistas baby! Watch out! image

     

    Talk about clinging to unfounded beliefs...

  • Reply 70 of 81
    thepixeldocthepixeldoc Posts: 2,257member
    jamesmac wrote: »
    This analysis seems to have been done factoring in only the iPhone. The trend in tablets appears to be decreasing ASPs, and Apple seems particularly vulnerable because they're selling more and more iPad minis versus some of the most expensive tablets in the industry. Until the details, including pricing, are made available for the next generation of iPads, I wouldn't trust these numbers.

    jamesmac wrote: »
    Sony just reported a small operating profit in their mobile division and Xiaomi has just turned profitable, so there are others.  But I take your point that this is a hard market to make money in as inevitably we move towards commoditization.  

    I don't agree with your latter statement.  Of course IOS is unique to Apple, but a 64 bit processor isn't that meaningful to the masses, and for Samsung, one of the worlds largest fabs, to license this from ARM and produce it is not particularly difficult.  The fingerprint reader is widely available on Lenovo laptops and again isn't particularly hard to replicate.  I'd suggest that curved screens are going to be one of the next innovations and Samsung and LG are likely ahead of others.

    jamesmac wrote: »
    Agreed, and I'm sure Sony would agree with you too!  They're working on it.

    Apparently, Google is working on it and some are even speculating that Kit Kat may be 64 bit.  You won't like my answer, but I suspect that no one else introduced 64 bit support because it's not really necessary, and it's a bit of a gimmick.  ARMV8 was more important, and Apple did very well in introducing this first and they deserve kudos for getting it out first.

    Yes, I agree, Lenovo fingerprint readers don't work that well.  If the market wants fingerprint readers, you can bet that Samsung and everyone else will have them.

    jamesmac wrote: »
    Woah, slow down.  The A7 is one fantastic bit of engineering, and if anything, I'd say SOC design is one of Apple's key strengths.  The move to a new ISA as part of ARMV8, plus hardware cryptography account for most of the performance gains.  The real benefits of 64 bit won't be seen until RAM exceeds 4GB.  The tight integration of hardware vs. software also helps Apple versus Android running on ARM or Intel BT.
    jamesmac wrote: »
    Yes, of course 64 bit systems can address less than 4GB of RAM and yes, 32 bit systems can address more than 4GB of RAM.  The issue is, how efficiently? 

    True, but Apple is pushing the 64 bit aspect of the A7 design aren't they?   I can't say I blame them, as it's good marketing to do so, and most people wouldn't know an ISA from a hole in the wall.

    JamesMac is a troll?  lol

    C'mon. Get off it.

    No I won't get off it... because he appears to be one of the "smooth writing concern trolls" that we every so often come across. You know, a few accolades here, a compliment to Apple there... but then the TRUE BLUE TRUTH pops it's head up.
  • Reply 71 of 81
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    I think you’re going a touch overboard.
    [SIZE=26px]?[/SIZE] This guy thinks that. :lol:
    Anyway, a simply copy paste from Wikipedia’ll take care of that.

    “But… Wikipedia!” So prove the above wrong with your own sources. We’ll wait.


    Most, if not all of that, is unrelated to either ARM or the discussion at hand. It mentions the pentium for one. Only mapped files would transfer.

    Look if you are not smart enough to understand this stuff don't post it. The A7 is a great processor but the 64 bit stuff is not the reason.
  • Reply 72 of 81
    thepixeldocthepixeldoc Posts: 2,257member
    Talk about clinging to unfounded beliefs...
    Please do point out an unfounded belief in THAT post. I may have some, but I didn't see it there.

    What was it? Do you think everything in Wiki is the truth? :rolleyes:
  • Reply 73 of 81
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post

    Most, if not all of that, is unrelated to either ARM or the discussion at hand.

     

    Sounds like exactly the discussion at hand to me. Sounds also like you don’t have a rebuttal to it.

  • Reply 74 of 81
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc View Post





    Please do point out an unfounded belief in THAT post. I may have some, but I didn't see it there.



    What was it? Do you think everything in Wiki is the truth? image

     

    About JamesMac being a troll. A concern troll nonetheless, according to you.

     

    This from a guy that says this:

     

    "I am NOT an engineer, but have also been a Mac user and overall tech enthusiast for some 30+ years."

  • Reply 75 of 81
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    Huh? That was from my post. What's there to prove on my part? Not an engineer as I said, but my math, physics and tech is up to snuff to understand and assess that it's probably not far from the scientific truth of the matter... "all things NOT being equal"... like "everything" you read at Wikipedia is the truth. It's a 'living encyclopedia" for dawgs sake! That's why my "opinion' was wait and see.

    As for JamesMac being a troll: I've been led to believe that trolls come in all shapes, sizes and intellect. Being intentionally stupid and pompous to boot... in order to hijack a forum thread, I believe can be defined as belonging to the Troll Nation i.e. Trollinistas baby! Watch out! :smokey:

    The term troll does not mean "people who disagree with me".

    This nonsense is tribal a bit like Anerican politics. If Samsung introduced a 64 bit processor the same posters who are certain it is great now would deem it crap then. DED would editorialise about it. In fact, people would then oppose apple moving to 64 bit because Samsung was first, as they oppose larger screens on phones and opposed smaller screens on the iPad because Android devices did that first.

    The A7 is great but 64 bits is only partially helpful and partially detrimental because pointer memory increases.
  • Reply 76 of 81
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    Sounds like exactly the discussion at hand to me. Sounds also like you don’t have a rebuttal to it.

    You didn't understand a word of it. Tell me do you think addressing on a 32 bit ARM is the same as 32 bit Pentium. ( to pick one thing you pasted and didn't read)
  • Reply 77 of 81
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Originally Posted by asdasd View Post

    Tell me do you think addressing on a 32 bit ARM is the same as 32 bit Pentium.

     

    Of course not. Do you think every one of those points is magically negated by the difference in architecture?

  • Reply 78 of 81
    thepixeldocthepixeldoc Posts: 2,257member
    [QUOTE]However, [I][B][COLOR=blue]users of most RISC platforms, and users of free or open source operating systems (where the source code is available for recompiling with a 64-bit compiler) have been able to use exclusive 64-bit computing environments for years.[/COLOR][/B][/I] Not all such applications require a large address space or manipulate 64-bit data items, so these applications do not benefit from these features. The main advantage of 64-bit versions of such applications is the ability to access more registers in the [B][I]x86-64 architecture.[/I][/B][/QUOTE]

    OK... because the wiki entry is a bit obtuse, maybe I can learn something here:

    1) is OSX hence iOS based on an open source operating system for this purpose? We've been led to believe that indeed it is with Free-BSD being it's kernel.

    2) could it be that this entry hadn't considered the advances of ARM technology at it's original writing (x86 advantage only).

    Which is why at the end I simply said, "Wait and see"... because it's possible that the Wiki entry is a) not up to date and b) results are now in from some of the devs seeing major speed jumps in their apps.

    I guess the biggest problem is there is no way to see whether it's due to 64-bit or not. Or am I wrong?

    Will we ever know? Is there some authoritative reference somewhere I can read specifically tailored to ARM 64 tech?

    I found this, but it is an ARM presentation from 2011 http://www.arm.com/files/downloads/ARMv8_Architecture.pdf

    and this from 2012 http://www.tgdaily.com/hardware-features/65536-analyst-arms-64-bit-architecture-is-clean-and-elegant

    What part of the above articles make Apple moving to 64-bit a "marketing gimmick"???????

    Enlighten me.
  • Reply 79 of 81
    thepixeldocthepixeldoc Posts: 2,257member
    About JamesMac being a troll. A concern troll nonetheless, according to you.

    This from a guy that says this:

    "I am NOT an engineer, but have also been a Mac user and overall tech enthusiast for some 30+ years."

    What? Just because I don't perceive or aggrandize myself with a self-made title you're going to discard my posts?

    If I was to toot my f***ing horn like others have done here, I would point out the literally 100's of people and businesses for 30 years have simply given me the title:
    "That-Mac-WindowsServer-Router-iOS-Freak-That-Keeps-Our-Business-and-Computers-Running-Guy".

    Is that good enough title for you? Do my posts have any more relevance now? 8-)

    Edited to toot some more: and some might even say, "... ya know he's a pretty darn good designer and production artist. Ya might ask him if he has some time to take a look at or new ad concept... when he's finished with the bonked router in the secretaries office, although that might take longer than expected, if you've seen the secretaries!" :smokey:
  • Reply 80 of 81
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by ThePixelDoc View Post





    What? Just because I don't perceive or aggrandize myself with a self-made title you're going to discard my posts?



    If I was to toot my f***ing horn like others have done here, I would point out the literally 100's of people and businesses for 30 years have simply given me the title:

    "That-Mac-WindowsServer-Router-iOS-Freak-That-Keeps-Our-Business-and-Computers-Running-Guy".



    Is that good enough title for you? Do my posts have any more relevance now? image

     

    Now you're going off the deep end.

     

    I never for a moment thought you would miscomprehend so greatly everything I have said to you.

Sign In or Register to comment.