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Apple Event

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by create3dgames, Sep 3, 2013.

  1. Dabeh

    Dabeh

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    This.
    Seems like nitpicking to be honest, the graph is trying to show a performance increase of 46x or whatever. A 2x or 3x difference won't look like that much on the graph. It seems to represent the change over time pretty well IMO.
     
  2. TylerPerry

    TylerPerry

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    I must say, that I can't see how the hell people buy these phones, like they are incredibly expensive, underpowered and pretty much all the components are not as good as those in high end Android phones. you all probably hate this, but in no way can this be considered a "better" product than the GS4 and the Galaxy s4 is cheaper! No wonder Android has exploded over the past years.
     
  3. CanOfColliders

    CanOfColliders

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    man, i was really hoping they sneak in pricing announcements of the mac pros on this event, oh well ..
     
  4. imaginaryhuman

    imaginaryhuman

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    The phone is just a vehicle for social involvement, status, belonging, being a part of something, popularity, etc... it's more than just the object, is what people USE the object for, beyond its technical functionality. That's what they buy, and that's what Apple markets.

    People buy dreams and fantasies, not reality.
     
  5. Ferazel

    Ferazel

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    Meh, new iPhones. The biggest announcement is the technical upgrade that these receive in regards to what we're assuming is a PowerVR6 chip. I really wish the Khronos group had the guts to make ASTC as part of the OpenGL ES 3.0 spec. Having it as an optional extension just makes me sad. Ideally, we'd start getting devices that support this texture compression by now so that in a couple years we can start targeting it with maximum support. Now it probably will be a couple more years before we could even potentially get this rolled into the spec on devices that can support it.
     
  6. Gigiwoo

    Gigiwoo

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    My earliest products didn't affect people the way I thought they should. And, it took me years to learn how to detach myself - allowing me to see the world from my customer's point of view. See, we are not rational people. Most of our decisions are made for emotional or habitual reasons, which is why marketers know that the best sales message addresses "WHY".

    It doesn't matter WHAT you sell, or even HOW you make it. Customers buy the WHY, which is why Android can charge less for 'better' hardware, and still have to fight tooth and nail to keep up with iOS.

    @Tyler - your quote highlights something deeply profound that every Indie must learn, either via success ... or via failure.

    Gigi.
     
  7. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    Ok random internet person: "That’s nonsense. There are serious performance gains by going 64-bit."....What performance benfit would that be requiring twice the memory fetches ? I think people mistakenly under the assumption that ARM processors work like x86 processors. 32bit x86 was always register starved. x86-64 fixed that. ARM has lots of registers in 32bit. x86 has GPU's that have GB of memory and wont fit into a 32bit address mapping with system mem while ARM does not. x86 typically uses HDD and mmaps large files for enterprise apps. ARM uses flash that wears out faster from that type of use and so it is discouraged. So what does 64bits get us on ARM on todays mobile phones ? Nothing.
    Next year when they go 3/4GB, it will be necessary. But 2GB is a hard limit for many ARM SoC's just like 3GB was a hard limit for x86 so 64bit is all about future devices NOT the 'EXTREEEEEEEME PERF' on mobile.
     
  8. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    Also, SIMD already gets your 64 bit wide regs on 32bit. Outside of encryption and memory pointer math, anything that uses more than 32bits in its algorithm is typically implemented in SIMD, which is NEON on ARM. And both VFP and NEON support 64bit doubles already. So we are left with 64bit integer ops. How many times do u write code that needs to count to 2^64 ??
     
  9. Starsman Games

    Starsman Games

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    What? I don't know how much things may cost in Australia, but in the US, if you get a contract-free 16GB S4, you have to pay $639.99 (and thats looking today at ATT, i think that price has dropped since it's introduction.) The iPhone 5s is listed at $649.00. You cant be doing such claims over$10 difference.

    In contract, both will cost you $199.99.

    As far as internals, we already are comparing a 32bit CPU with a 64bit CPU in the iPhone 5s. And thats with a considerably cheap plastic back shell on the Galaxy phones. The iPhones S line are packed in a heavy duty metalic shell. There is nothing inferior about that. Are there other cheaper phones? Yes I'll give you that, but they are not in the Galaxy S line and much less the Galaxy Note line.

    It always get me when people claim Android phones are cheaper, and then they dare mention the queality of the Galaxy line in the same paragraph. Again, yes you can get cheaper, but you always end up sacrificing something in those cheaper models.
     
  10. Starsman Games

    Starsman Games

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    Bawss, you disapoint me. :( This was an easy google search away.

    Although the document is written with a windows server point of view, this all gives you a hint of what it can do to mobile and desktops of every type. Memory addressability is just the tip of the iceberg.

    I bet the primary 2 reasons Apple had to do the jump was for better, faster encryption and securty features, likely video encouding also may get a fair boost from a 64bit cpu, allowing them to do much more, much faster.

    Another huge advantage for changing architectue to Arm8 is new instruction sets that were not available in Arm7, and these are things that you cant just back-implement in a 32bit environment, they are part of the architecture. Just using these instruction sets can result in heavily increased performance.

    From what I been reading, iOS was also designed from day one with APIs that were 100% 64bit safe, meaning all you need to do is recompile with Apple tools to gain advantage of all the cpu extra juice. Use of third-party APIs/libraries (like Unity) may require said libraries eventually get updated, though. *We* wont be seeing much an advantage (other than raw speed bump)

    Early benchmarks already show that even without optimization, we will see a significant bump in performance.

     
  11. Starsman Games

    Starsman Games

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    Another good article to read:
    http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57602372-94/the-real-reasons-apples-64-bit-a7-chip-makes-sense/

    Very good read if you are actually curious about the advantages of going ARMv8

    Disclaimer: that article does have its share of sily blanket statments. If you never used Int64 types in an app, sure unlikely to get performance just for running 64bits, but if you do, there will be some performance gains.
     
    Last edited: Sep 12, 2013
  12. Starsman Games

    Starsman Games

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    Not enough to negate the listed.

    It's an argument thats valid when some of that speed comes from not having to crunch 64bit values through a 32bit cpu.

    Consider that reply to not just the 64bit argument, but your arguments that there would not even be a 2x performance boost earlier in the thread.
     
  13. I am da bawss

    I am da bawss

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    No, you disappoint me! :D
    You should read my above post. x86-64 is different to ARM 64bit.





    Changing micro-architecture from ARM V7 to V8 has nothing to do with the argument of 64bit being faster. Just like v6 is to v7, they were both 32bit, but v7 is obviously faster due to micro-architctural optimization, not because of it going for more "bit".




    I think you are confusing GPU with CPU. (And you disappoint me again!) The performance boost is largely due to Apple adopting the new POWER VR Series 6 GPU (Code name Rogue), NOT because of using new 64bit CPU. PowerVR SGX 5xx series only support upto OpenGL ES 2.0, which is an indication that Apple has adopted the new GPU.
     
  14. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    This is from a person who's focussing on the technical aspects of the phone, though. Personally, despite being pretty tech savvy, I actually couldn't give a toss about the specs of my phone. What I want to know is how nice it is to use. And from my experience (I have used iOS and Android) Apple's phones and tablets are straight up more pleasant to use than Android. And it's not because of the hardware, it's because a) they're better designed and b) the software that ends up on them (from the OS through to applications) has better QA. This is possibly because the entire iOS experience is 100% user centric (which admittedly makes development a little less nice) where Android is at least in part made by tech enthusiasts for tech enthusiasts.
     
  15. Ayrik

    Ayrik

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    I agree. Then there's this:

    http://www.google.com/nexus/4/
    $199, no contract, one of the most powerful phones on the market. You make no sacrifices with Android here.
     
  16. Kryger

    Kryger

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    I'm not sure what all the ranting is about. It looks kind of insane. But it is correct that 64-bit processor is not actually necessary for smart phones at the moment, which is why it is interesting Apple chose to go that way. I suppose the switch is inevitable for everyone in the long run and they will have an advantage, or is there some other specific, short term reason for it? Or maybe it's technology for technology's sake after all?
     
  17. Gigiwoo

    Gigiwoo

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    What other Android phones do people recommend? The nexus 4 is pretty cost effective at $199 and my wife is interested in a larger screen.
    Gigi
     
  18. imaginaryhuman

    imaginaryhuman

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    Maybe the 64-bit route was in some way cheaper or easier to implement as a speed boost than trying to get the 32-bit chip to go faster?