Re: Is the snapdragon note 4 64-bit?
[most of post snipped for brevity -- go up a few posts if you want to see what I'm replying to]
Address space refers to the total amount of physical memory that can be accessed by a CPU at once time. In a 32-bit system the total address space is around 4GB.*
With a 64-bit system, this address space is raised from 4GB to theoretical maximum that ranges in exabytes (a billion gigabytes). There is no real ceiling with 64-bit.*
64-bit processors also feature many more registers, which allows for much greater simultaneous crunching of data. Many might argue this is actually more important than the address space issue.*
It’s this that is going to put an end to the trend of simply upping clock speeds in CPUs –*changes that have fairly little tangible benefit, and the reason why Android CPUs have barely progressed in the last year or so. CPU registers are where the actual data being worked on by the processor is stored, and more of them will allow a CPU to tackle more data simultaneously.*
While everything you say is true, I'm not certain how big an advantage it's going to be in the short term, the next year or two. (What follows is, of course, my opinion.)
The only real advantage of more memory at the moment is the ability to multi-task more apps, and I think there's a limit to how many apps the typical user is going to need to have open. And that limit is pretty much met with 3GB devices. I don't think you'll see a big increase in the available RAM in the first generation of 64 bit phones. Most will still ship with no more than 3 GB, if only for cost reasons and battery consumption reasons. Eventually we'll see new apps that take advantage of more memory, but that will take a while.
Even with multiple apps "running" in the background most Android apps don't really do much when they're not displayed. Run an app like System Panel, and you'll see most background apps are actually inactive. We're not doing big database updates in the background on Android phones, or downloading multiple large files while simultaneously viewing web pages in one window and editing a document in another. True background apps, like music players, don't use much memory or cpu at present.
Few current apps do much multi-threading as it is. It's going to take quite a while for Android apps to be upgraded to really take advantage of 64 bit systems.
I'm not convinced the better performance of the Exynos, compared to the Snapdragon, on current benchmarks has anything at all to do with it's 64 bit cores. More likely it's simply a better performing cpu, and the benchmarks take more advantage of the extra cores than normal apps do. The relationship between Antutu and real world us is questionable.
In any case, I think by the time we really have applications and use cases that take advantage of 64 bit devices, we'll be replacing our Note 4s with a Note 5, or 6. I wouldn't let a 32 bit CPU keep me from buying any current phone.
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