“I think they are doing a marketing gimmick. There’s zero benefit a consumer gets from that,” said Chandrasekher. Of course, he was talking about a specific product at a specific time and since we all know 64-bit support is inevitable, Qualcomm clarified Chandrasekher’s statements.
"The comments made by Anand Chandrasekher, Qualcomm CMO, about 64-bit computing were inaccurate. The mobile hardware and software ecosystem is already moving in the direction of 64-bit; and, the evolution to 64-bit brings desktop class capabilities and user experiences to mobile, as well as enabling mobile processors and software to run new classes of computing devices," a Qualcomm spokesperson told us.
However, Qualcomm stopped short of shedding any more light on its own 64-bit plans. Samsung already made it clear that it’s working on 64-bit parts, ARM’s A53 and A57 cores were announced ages ago and Nvidia has Project Denver. Qualcomm is still refusing to say anything about 64-bit Krait parts, but it’s more than obvious that it will have to roll out its own ARMv8 parts soon.
Given Qualcomm’s launch schedule, this probably won’t happen next year, as the Snapdragon 600 and 800 should be replaced in the first half of the year and it is highly unlikely that the new parts will feature 64-bit support.