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Why Apple Went 64-Bit With the iPhone 5s

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-about-the-software dept.

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Adrian Kingsley-Hughes says it's not just because Apple likes bragging about being first and because a 64-bit processor sounds cooler than 32-bits that Apple used the 64-bit A7 chip in the new iPhone 5s. A shift from a 32-bit processor to a 64-bit part paves the way for iPhones to be fitted out with 4GB+ of RAM down the line, but more importantly the move brings iOS and OS X apps much closer. The architecture for 64-bit apps on iOS will be almost identical to the architecture for OS X apps, making it easy to create a common code base that runs in both operating systems. 'Apple has slowly been bringing iOS-like features to Mac OS for years now: think of Launchpad and Gatekeeper,' writes Sascha Segan. 'The ultimate prize, of course, would be to bring the million-plus iOS apps to Macs. Apple could do that with an ARM-compatible virtual machine on Mac hardware, but it would want the VM, the OS and the associated apps to play nicely in the much larger memory space available on Macs. That means moving the whole system over to 64 bit.' By unifying iOS and Mac OS with Xcode developer tools in a 64-bit space, Apple could once again leap ahead of Microsoft and Google, says Segan. Microsoft hasn't yet been able to leverage its desktop strengths to achieve success as a mobile OS. The 64-bit chips for Android devices aren't ready, and neither is Android itself."

5 of 512 comments (clear)

  1. Debian by kthreadd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If it's such a big deal in order to get the same software to run on both systems then how does the Debian project manage to bring 37 000 packages to all eight architectures that it's currently running on? Magic?

  2. No. by symbolset · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If they wanted they could just throw their ARM chip into the Mac. Cross platform both ways. The reason why Apple went 64bit ARM is: it was time.

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    Help stamp out iliturcy.
    1. Re:No. by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's more like they didn't have much else for the iPhone 5S, just the fingerprint sensor. Everything else is either the same or a slight improvement, like the camera.

      Really? I could say the same about the last two iterations of a whole gaggle of Android devices. Is the point you are trying to make that that we have reached 'Peak Smartphone'? If that is the case the obvious follow up question is: Did that just dawn on you? (because the rest of us have known this for a while now)

      --
      Only to idiots, are orders laws.
      -- Henning von Tresckow
  3. Re: 64-bit BS by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I did. The whole thing is nonsense. You don't have to enforce a single architecture to have common code. Neither do you need to have a virtual machine running the same bit-ness as the host operating system. This is just the usual kind of cluelessness that comes from a community that is proud of being stupid.

    Yeah. 64-bit BS.

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    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  4. Re:RISC (iPhone) vs. CISC (OSX) by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You're funny.

    Are you seriously suggesting that Apple migrates their desktop machines to hardware that's about 10 years behind the curve in terms of performance when compared to x86?

    Stop swimming in the kool-aid.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.