Apple’s 64-bit A7 processor in the iPhone 5s has recently been criticized fire from Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Qualcomm.
According to Anand Chandrasekher:
I know there’s a lot of noise because Apple did [64-bit] on their A7. “I think they are doing a marketing gimmick. There’s zero benefit a consumer gets from that.
Predominantly… you need it for memory addressability beyond 4GB. That’s it. You don’t really need it for performance, and the kinds of applications that 64-bit get used in mostly are large, server-class applications.
However, a new report from Apple Insider, suggest nothing could be further from the truth. According to the Apple centric tech blog, lots of apps are already taking advantage of the new 64-bit architecture of the A7 Chip to boost performance and increase efficiency.
“This process has already improved Apple’s own software that’s bundled on the iPhone 5s, which has all been recompiled for 64-bit, from the kernel to libraries and drivers to apps such as Safari, Mail, Photos and Maps,” Daniel Eran Dilger writes for Apple Insider. “There is a marked increase in performance observed in moving from 32-bit to 64-bit benchmarks on the same hardware, in addition to the baseline improvement of the A7 over the A6 seen in 32-bit benchmarks.”
“The A7 isn’t just faster than the previous A6; it’s faster without requiring the additional cores and ramped up clock speeds of competing chips like Samsung’s Exynos 5 Octa. That contributes to faster performance in a lighter, smaller device because it doesn’t have to pack a larger battery to power a hot, high-revving brain that rapidly drains the battery,” Daniel Eran Dilger explained.
Personally, I believe Apple has something more special up its sleeves for going with the 64-bit architecture. The special project is Apple’s full-fledge iTV.
Here are two key reports that support my theory:
- Sisir Koppaka: I don’t believe Apple added 64-bit support to iOS 7 and all their apps just to prepare for an eventual transition to 4GB+ memory capacities in future iPhones. I think this was to do with something more impending. Do we know any product category that Apple would be interested in, that would require the use of both iOS and an A-series chip that is 64-bit capable in order to address 4GB+ memory? Apple TV (the one that is yet to come, not the one that exists).
- And to support Koppaka’s theory we have this news – Apple Hires Former CableLabs Exec Jean-François Mulé For Something “Big”.
