Tablets are 32 bit or 64 bit?

Excuse me for my ignorance but I was just thinking about the tablets wheter they have 32 bit or 64 bit hardware, like iPad 2, Transformer and Galaxy tab. Also what about upcoming windows 8 tablets, will they be 32 bit or 64 bit?

Second question: iOS, Android Honeycomb are 32 bit or 64 bit?
What about tablet version of windows 8? Is it going to be 64 bit?

Thanks for any replies.

 

32bit. ARM is currently 32bit. ARM is a completely seperate ISA from x86/AMD64, so they are not comparible at that level.

 

16 and 32 bit........

small computers, with limited storage and tightly controlled OS loads don't need too much cpu or memory addressing.

 

16 ? that seems to be too retrictive.

 

Plenty of computers are 16-bit. You just don't notice it. 32-bit's a lot more common in consumer electronics though.

 

We are talking about tablet, aren't we ?

EDIT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIPS_architecture

 

Why is 16 bit 'restrictive'??

The bit-width of a cpu doesn't have a lot to do with it's processing power.......

 

I have no more to say.

 

lol, I'll help.


16bit = 16 lane highway
32bit = 32 lane highway

It applies to internal buses, muxes, rings, execution units, etc.

 

Somehow I get the impression that programs may need more than 64k of memory nowadays, even on a tablet. Most likely 32 bit.

 

ARM tablets are just bigger editions of their companys phones, just without the actual phone capabilitied.
My Galaxy S 2 has 1gb of system memory so i doubt im running 64 bit Android.

Windows 8 can also be used on Intel / AMD tablets and probably will be 64 bit.
The ARM version of Windows 8?
Dont think so.

 

You know, despite having, in their history, 512bit memory bus (keep this distinction in mind), 16+16+16+16+32bit ALU clusters, internal two way 512bit rin buses, AMD GPU only needs a 16bit memory register space (well, call it addressing space, too)

Intel and AMD CPUs are not running a 64bit memory address space. 36-48bit, yes. 64bit? No. Intel and AMD CPUs are not really 64bit, their instruction sets may be, but certain extsions bring that to 128bit, and 256bit wide execution units... (more specifically, the FPU).

However, as an overall setup, I guess we can refer to the base instruction set, AMD64/x86_64 as defining the "64bit" system.

 

If by tablet you are excluding slates, then I don't know. But if your talking slates also, then there are several that run win7, which means they also can run 64. My ep121 is running win7 64, and there are others that can do so also. Or did I just misunderstand the question?

 

Jeremy. it is too late, and I have had a few too many drinks celebrating the Badgers win tonight to be able to comprehend what you said. It looks right, but I am not right. Thanks though.

 

Hi, thanks a lot for the reply. It makes sense now.

 

The most common ARM core design in use in tablets and phones has 2x 32 bit cpus with a nominal clock speed of 1 Gz. A lot of licensees take this core, wrap a load of extra stuff around it, and overclock it as high as 1.5 Gz (Archos). Common overclocking is at around 1.2 Gz.

Apple licensed this basic design and reworked it into their own A4/A5 line for iOS as found in the iPhone/iPod and iPad.

ARM has published reference designs for 64 bit chips with 4 cores that are intended to run at 1.5Gz nominal with overclocking possible depending on the specific hardware implementation. I don't think that anyone has taken that design to silicon outside of pre-production samples. People are kind of hung up on what Intel, AMD, and Nvidia are going to do with their next gen micro/mobile cpus. Some of that will depend on what Microsoft does with Windows 8.

ARM still makes a shedload of money licensing their 16 bit core designs though. Not everyone who needs an established ARM cpu needs the graphics and comms capabilities that phones and tablets do.

 

Just found a tablet that is designed for our future generation which is possibly using 16 bit core

VTech's InnoPad brings tablets to youngsters, floods their sponge-like brains with knowledge -- Engadget

 

ARM as a cpu architecture is all over. ARM designs are probably the most common industrial controller in production right now. Besides the devices we've talked about here, you're going to find ARM-derived cpus in everything from kids toys to washing machines and automotive & aviation engine controllers. Honeywell uses ARM cpus in digital flight deck systems used by Airbus and Boeing. Garmin uses ARM in their general aviation glass cockpit systems too. Honeywell, GE, and Williams use ARM in their FADEC turbine engine controllers.

MIPS is another one. Cisco uses a heavily customized MIPS design as the standard cpu in their commercial product lines. You'll find a lot of MIPS-derived cpus in cable tv set-top boxes (running QNX or some Linux distro). The Chinese are really, really enamored with the MIPS baseline architecture and have pushed the envelope with new designs and implementations.

 

Now you're using math and real sense. What's wrong with you?

2^16

 

This is really quite interesting. +rep. I don't think a lot of people know these kinds of things about embedded systems and the industry. Its a good indication of how wrong the logic is that ARM cpus are just sequentially a bar lower than say atom, and that even if they were all 32 & 64 bit it wouldn't matter because they are still a different instruction set and part of an entirely different industry.

 

Microsoft has stated that Windows 7 would be the last 32bit OS it ships.

Granted they may have meant desktop, but considering Windows 7 was designed for everything, I don't see why the desktop would only be 64bit, while the other is only 32bit. Google has at times even stated you need 64bit Ubuntu to compile Android, though they have gone back and made it work on 32bit as well.

Microsoft knows things about upcoming products long before we do. It's possible the new chips will be ready by then. Just don't expect a cheap Windows Phone.

 

Early on they announced they were considering it. Here is one piece discussing it, I'm not going to dig further though.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Exploring-Windows-8-Exclusively-64-Bit-Scenario-98641.shtml

At this point there are 32bit test builds out, so they are at least working on it, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee anything.

Interestingly, some sites are claiming that 32 and 64bit will have different interfaces and apparently MS is considering a 128bit version of Windows 8 and Windows 9.

 

128 bit? Why even bother? I can't imagine anyone using more than 16 exabytes of memory any time soon. The only benefit I can see is that you could get data to processors faster which is more important given the increasing amount of cores CPU's have.

Have microsoft got rid of that stupid home screen thing in windows 8 yet? If they release the final version like that them I'm going to look for a mod as soon as I get it, if that fails then I'll just turn green, rip of my shirt while yelling with a vein sticking out on my forhead and then crush cars with my feet while devouring a whole cow.

 

128-bit? Windows 7 still has 32-bit! 64-bit is only catching on, and that would mean 128-bit CPU instructions to take advantage of it right? I don't see that anywhere on the roadmap.

 

Because people automatically assume that a higher number must somehow automatically mean better. Or that newer must automatically mean better.

Comments like asking for 128-bit OSes are usually based off of uninformed assumptions, rather than actual practical knowledge (which you are trying to bring to the table).

 

Go look in stores and see how many systems are shipping with 32bit.

64bit Win7 outsells 32bit by a decent, if not large margin. A year ago they were nearly equal in sales, not anymore. I think we would have been done with 32bit already had Vista been released on time.

I have seen info on it since then, but I couldn't find it.

As for 32bit support, that will remain for a while (probably another 10 years). They kept 16bit support going for much longer than they should have.

 

CPUs are already internally 128-256bit (well, that last one will be a function of Bulldozer), in certain executions units (specifically, the FPU). In addition, the AVX instruction set supports 256bit...

x86 itself may not, but that won't stop developers from exploiting 128bit SSE and 256bit AVX instructions and capability.

 

the bitness does not mean the internal registers for special computing, or the bus, or anything. it means the amount of bits to address memory.

16bit was 2^16bytes = 65536bytes or 64kilobytes
32bit was 2^32bytes = 4294967296bytes or 4gigabytes
64bit is 2^64bytes = 18446744073709551616bytes or 16million terabytes (i'm aware current 64bit cpu's don't allow that much, they're more like 48bit cpu's or something for memory?)
128bit would be 16 billion billion times 16 million terabytes.

so each step is not just doubling, or quadrupling the space.

the last step from 32bit to 64bit increased the amount by 4 billion. that'll take some time, till we fill up 4 billion times the memory we fill up right now (4gb of ram is still plenty in most use cases).


there's no need on a single system to ever have 128bit. with 64bit, we could have, on a single system, enough ram to virtually run 4 billion 32bit systems, that means one 32bit pc for every other human out there. in ONE 64bit system.

the next step would simulate 2billion 64bit pc's per human on earth on one 128bit system. where each one would contain all those 32bit systems.

128bit might be fine for skynet, if that would be a single cpu one day.

other than that, arm will most likely push 64bit rather soon. i bet win8 tablets will pop out reaching the limit of 4gb ram, and then the wish for more will be there.

 

2Tb drives is where Win7 hits the wall on clusters, just as we did with fat16, fat32 and 32bit ntfs. Too large of a cluster and you start losing efficiency, yes it can go larger, but there are tradeoffs for it. We need a new file system, usually this is handled by a new OS and/or bit rate.


And, I disagree about never needing more than 64bit in computing, just because you can't foresee the need for that kind of power doesn't mean we won't find a use for it. A famous man once made a similar comment about 640k.

 

In 30 years there may be a possibility to use more than 16 exabytes of RAM but simply pushing for it "because you can" is pointless. The entirety of the internet is estimated to be less than 1000 exabytes (a zetabyte if you want to call it that).

Trust me in saying that we will have no need for 128 bit memory adresses in a long long time. The only acception I can see is cloud computing where it might just be possible to have a combined pool of memory which would need it.

In a few decades I would say it's a possibility but that's about it. Unless someone manages to get quantum computers working soon or something along the lines then we won't have a need for 128 bit untill then.

Put 2^64 into a calculator and then compare it to our beloved 6.02*10^23. It's only a few orders of magnitude smaller. Unless you can get RAM cells down to the order of atoms in size while also solving the very prevellant problem of quantum tunneling then you're going to need impossibly large chips to accomodate anything which could even come close to needing 128 bit addresses. Even on the atomic scale, you would still end up with something rivaling a house for size and weight.

Assuming Moore's law hold up nicely (which it has for the most part), it would take us roughly 60 years before the average computer could take advantage of 128 bit computing.

QED.

 

The "bitness" of a CPU generally represents the width of an integer used within a CPU. CPU designs use this integer-width to size internal general purpose registers, databuses, and other data units within the CPU. Also, the integer's size is used to compute memory addresses for RAM. So can address 2^16 = 65536 separate memory addresses (each storing 1 byte), 2^32 = 4294967296 addresses and so on. Note, this is a theoretical size, as most 64-bit CPUs do not yet access 2^64 bytes of memory. For example, AMD64 can only use 2^52 bytes of memory. I cannot find it, but Intel's 64-bit CPUs has a limit as well.


@Indrek -

Or did he... It's still fun to debate, and is amazing this quote has legs around 30 years later -

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484

http://www.computerworld.com/s/arti...te_won_t_go_away_but_did_Gates_really_say_it_

 

I know, but it's fun to say.

Even if we get a 128bit processor, something else in the system won't actually support that much memory.