Apple Announces A7, World's First 64-bit Smartphone SoC
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 10, 2013 1:36 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Apple
- Mobile
- SoCs
- iPhone 5S
Apple just announced the iPhones 5S featuring the A7 SoC, which is the world's first consumer ARM based SoC with 64-bit support. We're likely talking about an updated version of Apple's Swift microprocessor with ARMv8 support.
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danbob999 - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link
The new architecture is interesting but 64 bit by itself is useless for now on a phone (as long as there is less than 4GB RAM), even more than Android's quad-core CPUs.xinthius - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link
64Bit isn't just for more addressable RAM.DanNeely - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link
Other than more ram and support for larger integers in the main pipeline the difference between generation N 32 bit chips and N+1 64 bit chips is almost entirely stuff that could have been added while staying at 32bits.somata - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link
Exactly, the "bitness" of a processor doesn't directly imply performance. The N64 had a 64-bit MIPS R4300 nearly two decades ago, but it's thoroughly outclassed by subsequent 32-bit CPUs. Nevertheless, now is as good a time as any for Apple to deploy a 64-bit ARM core. I wonder how long until Apple starts developing its own ARM cores for Macs...Tom123 - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
In my opinion 64bit CPU is short path to Ax in MACs. Interesting is OpenGL ES 3.0 it mean new GPU. Rogue?PolishedMirror - Friday, November 19, 2021 - link
If you're still active here, they released their ARM-based cores on Macs on 2020So, 7 years?
andrei-z - Monday, September 12, 2022 - link
I guess we know now.name99 - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link
Don't be an idiot.The significant feature is NOT the 64-bitness, it is the ARMv8 ISA.
somata - Tuesday, September 10, 2013 - link
But what is the real significance of ARMv8 other than the 64-bit architecture?Kevin G - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
More registers and it standardizes much of what was optional or open in previous ARM ISA revisions.