4 ms·

One of the reasons the Android emulator is slow, it's because it has to emulate an arm chip to x86 instructions. So if I'm running an arm pc as my main dev pc..

One of the reasons the Android emulator is slow, it's because it has to emulate an arm chip to x86 instructions. So if I'm running an arm pc as my main dev pc... Would the emulator run magically fast? Like unicorns, rainbows and such?

mtgx 14y ago
My guess is they would have to make a version of the SDK for ARM, and they haven't yet. But they may soon enough as these ARM chips get closer to PC-like performance, and more people buy ARM machines.
whalesalad 14y ago
Isn't the entire point of the JVM: "write once, deploy everywhere" ??? Emulating the architecture makes sense from the standpoint that you want your development and 'production' (ie, the devices/handsets) to be the same ... but the Android emulator is INCREDIBLY slow. The juice is not worth the squeeze.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- Niten 14y ago
  Dalvik isn't the JVM, and Android is more than Dalvik. Android applications can also rely on ARM binaries developed against the NDK, so full ARM emulation is required in order to realistically test these.
- randallu 14y ago
  There used to be a "simulator" build of Android, where all of Android got shoved into one process, but it was flaky and broken as of Android 1.0 and never got revived. For the things I've done on Android (games, slideshows, etc) I've been able to exclusively use GL and not the Android UI toolkit, so it's simple for me to have a "desktop" target and do all of my real work there, occasionally building for device and testing...
aviraldg 14y ago
I guess you meant "was slow." As of now, the Android emulator ships with an Intel Atom image that uses Intel HAXM tech for native execution (and is much faster than using the ARM image/emulator) on an x86 machine.
zurn 14y ago
The emulator is qemu-based, and so is kvm. And, luckily the Cortex-A15 feature list has "hardware virtualization". And, quick googling shows there's ARM virtualization support for linux. And, this has already been done for android/x86. So all the major bits and pieces are there.
IgorPartola 14y ago
Have you checked out the Android-x86 project [1]? I remember, they were able to deliver some nice performance gains using an x86 emulator vs the ARM based emulators. [1] http://www.android-x86.org/ http://www.android-x86.org/

mtgx 14y ago

My guess is they would have to make a version of the SDK for ARM, and they haven't yet. But they may soon enough as these ARM chips get closer to PC-like performance, and more people buy ARM machines.

whalesalad 14y ago

Isn't the entire point of the JVM: "write once, deploy everywhere" ??? Emulating the architecture makes sense from the standpoint that you want your development and 'production' (ie, the devices/handsets) to be the same ... but the Android emulator is INCREDIBLY slow. The juice is not worth the squeeze.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Niten 14y ago
Dalvik isn't the JVM, and Android is more than Dalvik. Android applications can also rely on ARM binaries developed against the NDK, so full ARM emulation is required in order to realistically test these.
randallu 14y ago
There used to be a "simulator" build of Android, where all of Android got shoved into one process, but it was flaky and broken as of Android 1.0 and never got revived. For the things I've done on Android (games, slideshows, etc) I've been able to exclusively use GL and not the Android UI toolkit, so it's simple for me to have a "desktop" target and do all of my real work there, occasionally building for device and testing...

aviraldg 14y ago

I guess you meant "was slow." As of now, the Android emulator ships with an Intel Atom image that uses Intel HAXM tech for native execution (and is much faster than using the ARM image/emulator) on an x86 machine.

zurn 14y ago

The emulator is qemu-based, and so is kvm. And, luckily the Cortex-A15 feature list has "hardware virtualization". And, quick googling shows there's ARM virtualization support for linux. And, this has already been done for android/x86. So all the major bits and pieces are there.

IgorPartola 14y ago

Have you checked out the Android-x86 project [1]? I remember, they were able to deliver some nice performance gains using an x86 emulator vs the ARM based emulators. [1] http://www.android-x86.org/ http://www.android-x86.org/