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Samsung is going 64-bit too. But when?
Apple drew plenty of oohs and aahs this week when it revealed the first 64-bit chip for smartphones on Tuesday.
Samsung immediately chimed in, saying it is going to do the 64-bit thing too.
“Not in the shortest time. But yes, our next smartphones will have 64-bit processing functionality,” Samsung’s mobile business chief Shin Jong-kyun told the Korea Times on Wednesday.
The operative phrase is “not in the shortest time.” That echoes a discussion I had earlier this month with ARM executives when they spoke about the Cortex A53 and A57 — ARM’s 64-bit design.
“The Cortex A53 and A57 are being shipped to lead [chip] partners. They are pushing the product into a combination of top-end mobile and others into server-type designs,” said James Bruce, ARM’s lead mobile strategist.
But don’t get too excited. 64-bit ARM chips (from Samsung, Nvidia, Qualcomm et al) are likely a 2014 event, according to ARM. In other words, Samsung will be hard pressed to get 64-bit chips into shipping Galaxy tablets or phones before next year.
That’s when mobile devices will make a run at laptop, according to ARM. “It will allow tablet-like devices to go from information consuming devices to information creation devices,” ARM’s Bruce said.
You know, just like a PC — which have been 64-bit for a while now.
Samsung is already giving us a hint of a future of mobile devices packing PC-like memory capacities. The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 can use 3GB of memory.
Anything beyond 4GB and 64-bit chips become pretty much a necessity, as 32-bit processors in most cases can’t address more memory than that.
