Android will never have all devices actively being sold capable of 64-bit processing.
Actually it will be only two years. Think of it like this:
2013: One 64bit iPhone (5S) and two 32 bit iPhones (5C and 4S) are being sold.
2014: One new 64 bit iPhone 6, one older 64 bit iPhone 5S and one 32 bit low-end iPhone (5C) being sold.
2015: One new 64 bit iPhone 6S, one older 64 bit iPhone 6 and one "low-end" 64 bit iPhone 5S being sold.
So by 2015 Apple will only be selling 64 bit devices. Sure there will be some really old 32 bit iPhones around, but they would be ideal upgrade candidates for the 6S in 2015. By Christmas 2015 the vast majority of iOS devices will all be 64 bit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by patpatpat
Not by any meaningful amount. It's like saying that the 64GB iphone has worse battery life than the 16GB. Again it probably does but not by any meaningful amount, certainly nothing that can be easily observed.
You're missing a key point. Doubling the RAM basically doubles the power consumption because of how DRAM works (requires constant power to refresh). FLASH storage doesn't work like that - 64GB of FLASH doesn't require twice the power of 32GB FLASH.
The real problem (and why so many people keep yapping their traps about 4GB of RAM) is that developers have gotten lazy over the years. When I started coding it was on a Z80 with 64KB RAM. Programmers had to be very efficient when they coded to make things work on systems with severe constraints on RAM.
Nowadays PC's have ridiculous amounts of RAM and nobody bothers to optimize their code for size. The only industry where code optimization is still important (and widely practiced) is embedded systems with microcontrollers (which still have limited storage). Apple is treating their iDevices and iOS like an engineer working on an embedded system would - making something work on a system with limited resources. Android is going the PC route - assuming the device will have loads of RAM and processor power and code accordingly (lazy).
Consumers are used to bloated programs from years of using them on PC's. Last time I downloaded a printer driver for Win 7 it came in at 130MB. Seriously? 130MB for a f^&king printer driver? So it's difficult for many people to grasp the concept of a useful program or OS taking up a fraction of the space of something like Windows.
Years ago QNX (yes, QNX that Blackberry bought) had a demo disk to show off how efficient their OS was. It came on a 1.44MB floppy disk. Put the floppy into your PC, let it boot up and soon you had a GUI OS running on your PC. Then you could launch the web browser and start viewing web pages. You could even run Java apps in the browser. It only required a PC with 8MB of RAM to run on.
I think a lot of the "4GB idiots" should learn their computer history before spouting off and making themselves look foolish.
This is complete rubbish. The power draw of 2 or 4GB of dram is negligible. In fact with more dram the system and applications become much more efficient, which if anything, helps battery life.
The use of 1GB is purely a cost/margin choice.
You may be correct, I'm not an expert in mobile battery life issues. I was basing my comments on things I have read written by people who are more knowledgable than me. I find it difficult to believe that Apple would scrimp on RAM due to price concerns when they obviously have put a lot of expensive embellishments into their latest smartphones.
Apple isn’t going to start shipping a phone with more than 4GB of RAM, because RAM takes a significant amount of power to initialize. That’s a non-starter. In mobile, you rearchitect to cut power, not to spend more of it running banks of memory you don’t need.
Sinofsky then introduced a detailed explanation authored by Bill Karagounis, the group program manager of Microsoft's Performance team, to detail exactly why using less RAM is so critically important.
Karagounis points out that "minimizing memory usage on low-power platforms can prolong battery life," noting that "In any PC, RAM is constantly consuming power. If an OS uses a lot of memory, it can force device manufacturers to include more physical RAM. The more RAM you have on board, the more power it uses, the less battery life you get.
As Moorhead notes, in order to really take advantage of all that 64-bit offers, you need a smartphone with more than 4GB of RAM. And that much RAM requires significantly more power to run. And, as Apple and Samsung are both well aware, more than processing power, battery life is of paramount concern in today’s smartphones.
Funny how AI suggests there was speculation about the A7 being manufactured by TSMC. The only such speculation I have found was by AI, and was reposted by a few others.
Android will never have all devices actively being sold capable of 64-bit processing.
Nor does it need to. That's the benefit of their VM-based approach - it isolates app developers from the underlying hardware, so OEMs can choose the best processor for a particular device. Dalvik already runs on 32-bit ARM, x86, and MIPS. While some future devices will benefit from 64-bit CPUs, there's no need for every device to be 64-bit.
Reports that Ram size having a major affect on battery life are seriously overblown. 4s has 512MB and 1430mah battery 5 has DOUBLE the ram at 1GB and a 1440mah battery. Battery life for video playback is about the same for both, the 5 being a little shorter but having a larger screen to deal with. The ram type is often more critical than the capacity when determining power consumption. Moving from 1GB ddr2 ram to 2GB ddr3 for example , can actually result in a significant power saving.
I use both an iphone5 and an HTC One, so I don't see myself as a fanboy of neither iOS nor Android.
Having said that... Ralph Malph and Earthzero:
Your ignorance about Linux and 64 bits computing (or more specifically memory handling, kernels and apps "written for 64 bits) is embarrassing to say the least.
Please go read up on the subject, before you embarrass yourself and other Android owners again.
Yes, the iPhone is the first 64 bits smartphone. And it can take advantage of that in ways that an Android phone can't, thanks to fragmentation.
And no, Android isn't "Linux" anymore than BB10 is QNX.
Absolutely nothing you've said is actually true...
Android forked away (as in they were 100% part of the Linux kernel tree and thus LINUX) as it matured, but were completely brought back into the Linux kernel fold in the first half of 2012. You seemed to be living in the relatively distant past, needing a serious lesson in Android/Linux history and absolutely unwilling to listen to anything that I say. Sadly, it's exactly the type of resistance I expected to run into on this forum and why I've hesitated to post anything in the past. This is why I try to provide actual links to people's comments, articles and quotes who ABSOLUTELY know what they are talking about to validate my points--UNLIKE some people on this thread. Android is ABSOLUTELY part of the Linux kernel. Saying that it isn't would be like saying that Ubuntu and Ubuntu Touch aren't Linux. This article was on Wired just last week:
In case you missed it in your blind fury, I'll post this again:
“[While Apple touted 64-bit support in the new iPhone,] that’s done in Linux, has been done for a long time. The Android ecosystem just picks that up by default, they don’t have to go through any special development process to do that.”
– Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin
I really didn't have to prove anything to you at all, I can hope and wish that people would read, research and listen. That's the only reason I joined this thread. The "in a bubble" circle-jerk and misinformation were clearly getting out of control and I felt the need to do something about it. Unfortunately, some people want to stick their fingers in their ears and say, "La, la, la, la..."
The 1GB of system dram in 5s is apparently ddr3 and incorporated into the a7 die itself. This should be a significant performance and power advantage over say A6x where the larger, slower and less power efficient ddr2 memory resided outside the core.
Assuming apple want to continue with internal memory for phone processors, bumping up to 2 or 4 GB would be a modified A7 design.
The 1GB of system dram in 5s is apparently ddr3 and incorporated into the a7 die itself. This should be a significant performance and power advantage over say A6x where the larger, slower and less power efficient ddr2 memory resided outside the core.
Assuming apple want to continue with internal memory for phone processors, bumping up to 2 or 4 GB would be a modified A7 design.
This I actually agree with if it's correct; however, I still believe that it will be the next generation of iPhone that will fully reap the rewards of 64-bit and not this one. Again, only time will tell. Nobody has to take anything I write here seriously at all. :-)
I think shackled is the wrong term to use in this situation. It is more like...because iOS is so efficient, Apple only needs to support 1 GB of RAM thus maintaining the best in class mobile device battery life. The concept is that the more RAM the device needs to power up the more battery is consumed even when idle. If you put 4 GB of RAM in the device, you need to increase the size of the battery proportionally.
Based on that we should all revert back to 64K of Ram and increase battery life to, let say, 3 weeks?
Based on that we should all revert back to 64K of Ram and increase battery life to, let say, 3 weeks?
Why not take that line of thinking to its ultimate conclusion and give the phone zero RAM. That way you'll never need to charge the battery. In fact you won't even need a battery.
Because clearly it needs to be a balance of enough RAM to do what is needed coupled with enough battery to last 8-10 hours and keep the thinness of the device as optimal as possible. Same goes for the screen size. Larger screen uses more battery as well. Everything in moderation, including the price.
I can't recall ever seeing an alert on my iPhone "Out of Memory". And... never once has my iPhone crashed or become unresponsive.
Why not take that line of thinking to its ultimate conclusion and give the phone zero RAM. That way you'll never need to charge the battery. In fact you won't even need a battery.
Don’t even need a phone, then, either. Heck, do away with civilization. Fire bad! Burn Ogg!
Why do samsung makes A7 chip for apple, cant samsung refuse to manufacture anymore even when samsung knows that it increases apple sales....... This posts means that apple takes things from other companies????? what the heck :-/
Why do samsung makes A7 chip for apple, cant samsung refuse to manufacture anymore even when samsung knows that it increases apple sales....... This posts means that apple takes things from other companies????? what the heck...
64 bit will only take advantage of its processing power when there is more than 4GB of RAM.
Most phones now only have 1 - 2GB of RAM.
Nonsense...
You're confusing the situation from when Microsoft was trying to switch to 64bit on x86 machines.
Read up on some basic computer science, and you'll see that a 64bit CPU has some inherent advantages over a 32 bit CPU.
For example, it's faster in encryption/decryption tasks and media en/decoding.
And that's even before we take the new instruction set in the 64bit ARM into the equation.
Look at the Anandtech review of the iPhone 5s and you'll see that despite the A7 CPU having the same number of cores and the same 1.3ghz as the A6 CPU, its roughly twice as fast ACROSS THE BOARD.
Oh, and it also trounces Samsungs and LG handsets, despite their quad core CPUs clocked much faster.
Read through the chipworks report and... I work in the semiconductor industry. I think their conclusion is very questionable. Knowing what I know about the Samsung state of the 28nm process and factory capacity and utilization over the past 6 months, there is no way Samsung is making the A7.
I starting writing and email to chipworks but pulledback from fear of saying too much.
Comments
Yes, in exactly three years at the latest.
Android will never have all devices actively being sold capable of 64-bit processing.
Actually it will be only two years. Think of it like this:
2013: One 64bit iPhone (5S) and two 32 bit iPhones (5C and 4S) are being sold.
2014: One new 64 bit iPhone 6, one older 64 bit iPhone 5S and one 32 bit low-end iPhone (5C) being sold.
2015: One new 64 bit iPhone 6S, one older 64 bit iPhone 6 and one "low-end" 64 bit iPhone 5S being sold.
So by 2015 Apple will only be selling 64 bit devices. Sure there will be some really old 32 bit iPhones around, but they would be ideal upgrade candidates for the 6S in 2015. By Christmas 2015 the vast majority of iOS devices will all be 64 bit.
Not by any meaningful amount. It's like saying that the 64GB iphone has worse battery life than the 16GB. Again it probably does but not by any meaningful amount, certainly nothing that can be easily observed.
You're missing a key point. Doubling the RAM basically doubles the power consumption because of how DRAM works (requires constant power to refresh). FLASH storage doesn't work like that - 64GB of FLASH doesn't require twice the power of 32GB FLASH.
The real problem (and why so many people keep yapping their traps about 4GB of RAM) is that developers have gotten lazy over the years. When I started coding it was on a Z80 with 64KB RAM. Programmers had to be very efficient when they coded to make things work on systems with severe constraints on RAM.
Nowadays PC's have ridiculous amounts of RAM and nobody bothers to optimize their code for size. The only industry where code optimization is still important (and widely practiced) is embedded systems with microcontrollers (which still have limited storage). Apple is treating their iDevices and iOS like an engineer working on an embedded system would - making something work on a system with limited resources. Android is going the PC route - assuming the device will have loads of RAM and processor power and code accordingly (lazy).
Consumers are used to bloated programs from years of using them on PC's. Last time I downloaded a printer driver for Win 7 it came in at 130MB. Seriously? 130MB for a f^&king printer driver? So it's difficult for many people to grasp the concept of a useful program or OS taking up a fraction of the space of something like Windows.
Years ago QNX (yes, QNX that Blackberry bought) had a demo disk to show off how efficient their OS was. It came on a 1.44MB floppy disk. Put the floppy into your PC, let it boot up and soon you had a GUI OS running on your PC. Then you could launch the web browser and start viewing web pages. You could even run Java apps in the browser. It only required a PC with 8MB of RAM to run on.
I think a lot of the "4GB idiots" should learn their computer history before spouting off and making themselves look foolish.
The use of 1GB is purely a cost/margin choice.
You may be correct, I'm not an expert in mobile battery life issues. I was basing my comments on things I have read written by people who are more knowledgable than me. I find it difficult to believe that Apple would scrimp on RAM due to price concerns when they obviously have put a lot of expensive embellishments into their latest smartphones.
Sinofsky then introduced a detailed explanation authored by Bill Karagounis, the group program manager of Microsoft's Performance team, to detail exactly why using less RAM is so critically important.
Karagounis points out that "minimizing memory usage on low-power platforms can prolong battery life," noting that "In any PC, RAM is constantly consuming power. If an OS uses a lot of memory, it can force device manufacturers to include more physical RAM. The more RAM you have on board, the more power it uses, the less battery life you get.
Nor does it need to. That's the benefit of their VM-based approach - it isolates app developers from the underlying hardware, so OEMs can choose the best processor for a particular device. Dalvik already runs on 32-bit ARM, x86, and MIPS. While some future devices will benefit from 64-bit CPUs, there's no need for every device to be 64-bit.
4s has 512MB and 1430mah battery
5 has DOUBLE the ram at 1GB and a 1440mah battery.
Battery life for video playback is about the same for both, the 5 being a little shorter but having a larger screen to deal with.
The ram type is often more critical than the capacity when determining power consumption.
Moving from 1GB ddr2 ram to 2GB ddr3 for example , can actually result in a significant power saving.
And 640k ought to be enough for anyone.
And 640k ought to be enough for anyone.
What? Could you actually respond to my point rather than just make nonsensical posts?
What? Could you actually respond to my point rather than just make nonsensical posts?
Responded directly. Your inability to comprehend that is telling.
Nope. Not ‘nothing’, at least.
I use both an iphone5 and an HTC One, so I don't see myself as a fanboy of neither iOS nor Android.
Having said that... Ralph Malph and Earthzero:
Your ignorance about Linux and 64 bits computing (or more specifically memory handling, kernels and apps "written for 64 bits) is embarrassing to say the least.
Please go read up on the subject, before you embarrass yourself and other Android owners again.
Yes, the iPhone is the first 64 bits smartphone. And it can take advantage of that in ways that an Android phone can't, thanks to fragmentation.
And no, Android isn't "Linux" anymore than BB10 is QNX.
Absolutely nothing you've said is actually true...
In case you missed it in your blind fury, I'll post this again:
“[While Apple touted 64-bit support in the new iPhone,] that’s done in Linux, has been done for a long time. The Android ecosystem just picks that up by default, they don’t have to go through any special development process to do that.”
– Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin
I really didn't have to prove anything to you at all, I can hope and wish that people would read, research and listen. That's the only reason I joined this thread. The "in a bubble" circle-jerk and misinformation were clearly getting out of control and I felt the need to do something about it. Unfortunately, some people want to stick their fingers in their ears and say, "La, la, la, la..."
Assuming apple want to continue with internal memory for phone processors, bumping up to 2 or 4 GB would be a modified A7 design.
The 1GB of system dram in 5s is apparently ddr3 and incorporated into the a7 die itself. This should be a significant performance and power advantage over say A6x where the larger, slower and less power efficient ddr2 memory resided outside the core.
Assuming apple want to continue with internal memory for phone processors, bumping up to 2 or 4 GB would be a modified A7 design.
This I actually agree with if it's correct; however, I still believe that it will be the next generation of iPhone that will fully reap the rewards of 64-bit and not this one. Again, only time will tell. Nobody has to take anything I write here seriously at all. :-)
The A7’s memory controller sees big improvements as well. I measured 20% lower main memory latency on the A7 compared to the A6.
Why not take that line of thinking to its ultimate conclusion and give the phone zero RAM. That way you'll never need to charge the battery. In fact you won't even need a battery.
Because clearly it needs to be a balance of enough RAM to do what is needed coupled with enough battery to last 8-10 hours and keep the thinness of the device as optimal as possible. Same goes for the screen size. Larger screen uses more battery as well. Everything in moderation, including the price.
I can't recall ever seeing an alert on my iPhone "Out of Memory". And... never once has my iPhone crashed or become unresponsive.
Don’t even need a phone, then, either. Heck, do away with civilization. Fire bad! Burn Ogg!
Nonsense...
You're confusing the situation from when Microsoft was trying to switch to 64bit on x86 machines.
Read up on some basic computer science, and you'll see that a 64bit CPU has some inherent advantages over a 32 bit CPU.
For example, it's faster in encryption/decryption tasks and media en/decoding.
And that's even before we take the new instruction set in the 64bit ARM into the equation.
Look at the Anandtech review of the iPhone 5s and you'll see that despite the A7 CPU having the same number of cores and the same 1.3ghz as the A6 CPU, its roughly twice as fast ACROSS THE BOARD.
Oh, and it also trounces Samsungs and LG handsets, despite their quad core CPUs clocked much faster.
If they want to be sued into bankruptcy, sure.
It benefits Samsung more than Apple because the former gets to keep stealing the latter’s designs this way.
Is English your first language?
I starting writing and email to chipworks but pulledback from fear of saying too much.