Apple announces 64-bit A7 chip and 'motion coprocessor' — pay attention, game and fitness-app developers

Apple announced that its new iPhone 5S will be driven by an ARM-based A7 processor that can process data in 64 bit chunks, or twice the number for past chips.

That processor will be able to handle code for more demanding applications, including high-end games, as demonstrated onstage by Epic Games.

The new chip will be accompanied by what Apple is calling the M7, a motion coprocessor. That means that sensors and processing data from those sensors is now such a big part of the smartphones tasks that it merits a full-blown second chip.

The motion coprocessor uses an accelerometer, a gyroscope, compass, and other things that can take real-world data and convert it into data that we can consume, such as how many steps we’ve walked in a day.