5 ms·

Bull. I've seen numerous comments in articles that they were caught flat footed. Oh, I'm sure you've seen lurid tales of mysterious, unnamed sources who will r

by personZ 13y ago

Bull. I've seen numerous comments in articles that they were caught flat footed. Oh, I'm sure you've seen lurid tales of mysterious, unnamed sources who will regale about how flat-footed Qualcomm -- one of the largest ARM processor makers in the world, closely intertwined with ARM's 64-bit efforts -- was with Apple's introduction. Might you also be in the market for a bridge? If Qualcomm is "responding" to anyone it is other chip vendors (such as MediaTek), because those are who Qualcomm competes with. Qualcomm does not compete with Apple. Again, Apple could have come out with a new, improved A6 and they would have gotten as many iPhone 5s sales, and they would have taken exactly the same number of deign wins from Qualcomm (0). If they don't modify the cores, then they're just a fab house. So they should change things just because? The A57 is a fantastic design, and is poised to offer incredible power to power consumption (and, if preliminary analysis is correct, Apple will have gone down the wrong path jumping the gun on ARMv8, having effectively put themselves a lap behind). Qualcomm will likely offer their own take on things later, but right now they might just go with what gets them a great design with little risk. Given Android OEMs' histories of shipping ancient versions it wouldn't surprise me if brand new 32 bit Android phones were selling in the millions two years from now. I would not be surprised at all. And it doesn't matter at all. Why should it matter? That is a complete non-problem.

userbinator 13y ago
If Qualcomm is "responding" to anyone it is other chip vendors (such as MediaTek) MTK is one of the vendors that seems to have little (or even negative) reputation in the West, but their turnkey reference designs are extremely popular in southeast Asia. They're not (currently) competing on performance, but value, although that may start changing soon. I also have a feeling that their "officially proprietary/confidential but unofficially semi-open" stance - see http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040 http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040 - may be helping their popularity. It's true that they're not so GPL-friendly with Android sources and such, but when I found over 1GB of very detailed register-level documentation... the decision was pretty easy. I would not be surprised at all. And it doesn't matter at all. Why should it matter? That is a complete non-problem. Agreed, as long as they're 4GB of RAM or less (which is probably still plenty for many applications).
- alayne 13y ago
  You don't need ARMv8 to address 4GB. That is a red herring. ARMv8 redid the instruction set and registers with significant performance benefits.
- vardump 13y ago
  Previous 32-bit ARM designs, such as Cortex A7 and Cortex A15 could address up to 1TB of RAM just fine. I think it's time to put a stop on this misinformation that 64-bit is needed for more than 4GB of RAM. It is not true.
  - lgeek 13y ago
    That's with PAE, you're still limited to 4GB of virtual address space, or rather 3GB with the default Linux configuration.
    - vardump 13y ago
      3GB per process. Or in Android context, 3GB RAM per app. Currently very few apps consume over 100MB RAM.
alayne 13y ago
Are you calling Anandtech a mysterious, unnamed source? "What's interesting to me is just how quickly Qualcomm has shifted from not having any 64-bit silicon on its roadmap to a nearly complete product stack. Qualcomm appeared to stumble a bit after Apple's unexpected 64-bit Cyclone announcement last fall. Leaked roadmaps pointed to a 32-bit only future in 2014 prior to the introduction of Apple's A7" - The Fine Article
- personZ 13y ago
  Are you calling Anandtech a mysterious, unnamed source? No, I was referring to the general claim by articles that "sources" from "inside Qualcomm" gave them such information. However Anand's comment was...dubious. Qualcomm doesn't generally publish a roadmap, and there was a single leak of uncertain origin that actually showed Qualcomm's own 64-bit IP (their own designed cores) in Q4 of 2014. So not only was Anand wrong about what the supposed roadmap contained, the roadmap itself has absolutely no credibility to begin with (even if it were made within Qualcomm, it could easily have been made by a division such as marketing that is going on the most certain of facts, while engineering may very well have had such a plan to adopt ARM's design for iteration 1, and then customize for iteration 2). Making any broad claims about Qualcomm from that is ill-informed rumor mongering, which Anand is not always above.

by personZ 13y ago

userbinator 13y ago

If Qualcomm is "responding" to anyone it is other chip vendors (such as MediaTek) MTK is one of the vendors that seems to have little (or even negative) reputation in the West, but their turnkey reference designs are extremely popular in southeast Asia. They're not (currently) competing on performance, but value, although that may start changing soon. I also have a feeling that their "officially proprietary/confidential but unofficially semi-open" stance - see http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040 http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3040 - may be helping their popularity. It's true that they're not so GPL-friendly with Android sources and such, but when I found over 1GB of very detailed register-level documentation... the decision was pretty easy. I would not be surprised at all. And it doesn't matter at all. Why should it matter? That is a complete non-problem. Agreed, as long as they're 4GB of RAM or less (which is probably still plenty for many applications).

alayne 13y ago
You don't need ARMv8 to address 4GB. That is a red herring. ARMv8 redid the instruction set and registers with significant performance benefits.
vardump 13y ago
Previous 32-bit ARM designs, such as Cortex A7 and Cortex A15 could address up to 1TB of RAM just fine. I think it's time to put a stop on this misinformation that 64-bit is needed for more than 4GB of RAM. It is not true.
- lgeek 13y ago
  That's with PAE, you're still limited to 4GB of virtual address space, or rather 3GB with the default Linux configuration.
  - vardump 13y ago
    3GB per process. Or in Android context, 3GB RAM per app. Currently very few apps consume over 100MB RAM.

alayne 13y ago

Are you calling Anandtech a mysterious, unnamed source? "What's interesting to me is just how quickly Qualcomm has shifted from not having any 64-bit silicon on its roadmap to a nearly complete product stack. Qualcomm appeared to stumble a bit after Apple's unexpected 64-bit Cyclone announcement last fall. Leaked roadmaps pointed to a 32-bit only future in 2014 prior to the introduction of Apple's A7" - The Fine Article

personZ 13y ago
Are you calling Anandtech a mysterious, unnamed source? No, I was referring to the general claim by articles that "sources" from "inside Qualcomm" gave them such information. However Anand's comment was...dubious. Qualcomm doesn't generally publish a roadmap, and there was a single leak of uncertain origin that actually showed Qualcomm's own 64-bit IP (their own designed cores) in Q4 of 2014. So not only was Anand wrong about what the supposed roadmap contained, the roadmap itself has absolutely no credibility to begin with (even if it were made within Qualcomm, it could easily have been made by a division such as marketing that is going on the most certain of facts, while engineering may very well have had such a plan to adopt ARM's design for iteration 1, and then customize for iteration 2). Making any broad claims about Qualcomm from that is ill-informed rumor mongering, which Anand is not always above.