

Anand Chandrasekher  (Source: itnews)
Chandrasekher's comments come back to bite him in the butt


Source: CNET

Comments     Threshold


RE: Was he dead wrong?
By coburn_c on 10/25/2013 5:12:18 PM , Rating: 0
Nothing running on a smartphone requires nor utilizes a 64 bit register. Nor should it. We don't need bloated apps that require 4gigs of ram, and there is no more 64 bit flash. This is a waste of development, a waste of die space, and will hamper clock speed advances. This is bad for the product. This is a numbers game. Bigger number on the box. Dumber product, dumber customer.

RE: Was he dead wrong?
By inighthawki on 10/25/2013 5:21:00 PM , Rating: 2
I disagree, there are numerous benefits to 64-bit beyond a larger physical address space. 64-bit pointers provide the ability to provide larger virtual address spaces (which can be used to reserve larger chunks of contiguous regions, or memory map files), have native 64-bit processing which will improve performance in any application that relies heavily on 64-bit values (IO is a key area here).

On top of all of that it provides future-proofing for when physical address spaces do need to grow beyond 4GB. And there are more reasons this is beneficial than just because apps get bigger. More memory means more apps open at once. When there is memory contention, the OS may no longer have to terminate apps, and they can now remain suspended in the background until you come back to them. This avoids the startup cost of the app since the working set is still in memory.

You're under a fatal assumption that phones having 4GB of ram means that it needs 4GB to run and it's bloated. More memory is almost always a good thing.

RE: Was he dead wrong?
By TakinYourPoints on 10/25/13, Rating: 0
RE: Was he dead wrong?
By jmerk on 10/25/2013 11:02:26 PM , Rating: 2
my guess that someone said the same thing when AMD release their 64 bit processors in the late 90's. I also remember in the 90's if we need more than 2gb drives because that was the limit of fat16. Would you like to return to 2gb hard drives. You can't even run fully updated windows xp on that now. You are right, nothing on today's smartphones need 64 bit. However you need the hardware first before the software will come. It took years between 64 bit processors and mainstream software to catch up to use it. Even today there are still some software that still works on 32 bit.

RE: Was he dead wrong?
Late 90's¿ More like mid 2000's.

RE: Was he dead wrong?
By testbug00 on 10/25/2013 11:33:43 PM , Rating: 2
You are thinking of 64-bit as AMD did it (copied by Intel) for x86 CPUs.

Moving to 64 bit gives you more performance provided you don't have baggage, which ARM doesn't.

RE: Was he dead wrong?
By chripuck on 10/28/2013 2:30:02 PM , Rating: 2
Since when does ARM not have baggage? Unless they are rewriting their entire instruction set in 64 bit and intend to provide zero backwards compatability for legacy hardware they HAVE to carry that baggage. Now granted they only have 10 years of baggage compared to 30 for Intel, but nevertheless, it's there.

RE: Was he dead wrong?
By nafhan on 10/28/2013 3:16:17 PM , Rating: 2
Let me guess you're using a 386, still? Otherwise, I think you just called yourself a dumb customer...

RE: Was he dead wrong?
By coburn_c on 10/28/2013 4:23:27 PM , Rating: 2
Tons of hyperbole lobbed at me for my assessment of this superfluous feature. Wonder if it's an Apple thing or you all just like to bandwagon. If I wanted a low heat processor and only needed to perform lightweight functions I may well chose a 386, as it will run cooler than any modern desktop CPU. This is a mobile device, it runs on a battery, has a tiny screen with a huge DPI, and only needs to perform functions that can be sustained standing in line at Starbucks. It therefore doesn't need a 64-bit processor, which adds unneeded complexity and cost.

