Hello list,
Today we're announcing a new technical preview of ARM optimized toolchain for Android platform by Linaro[1].
Linaro is a NFP (Not For Profit) organization that aims to make embedded open source development easier and faster. Regardless of Android release cycle from AOSP, Linaro would like to bring the latest and ARM optimizing open source technologies to the common software foundation for software stack, and Linaro toolchain[2] deals with all aspects of system-level tools - the core development toolchain (compiler, assembler, linker, debugger).
In this announcement, the technical preview of ARM optimized toolchain for Android is available for evaluation: (source repository and binary package) https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/Toolchain
An early activity of the Android Platform Team has been to run the Android benchmark suite to show the gains possible in going from the default Google 4.4 based toolchain to the Linaro 4.5 toolchain. The experimental benchmarks were run on a 600 MHz Cortex-A8 board running Android 2.2: (unofficial, for reference only) https://wiki.linaro.org/JimHuang/Sandbox/LinaroToolchainAndroidBenchmarking
Developers can utilize the optimization techniques from GNU Toolchain and Linaro's ARM improvements through Linaro Toolchain for Android and NDK. For example, skia benchmark[3] brings 11% performance improvements after using Linaro Toolchain.
Linaro's Android platform team plans to deliver the final linaro-11.05 release, and you can check out the status of open development: https://launchpad.net/linaro-android/
On-going Blueprints: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/linaro-android/+spec/linaro-android-toolcha... https://blueprints.launchpad.net/linaro-android/+spec/linaro-android-toolcha... https://blueprints.launchpad.net/linaro-android/+spec/linaro-android-google-...
Sincerely, Jim Huang, Android platform team, Linaro
[1] http://www.linaro.org/ [2] https://wiki.linaro.org/WorkingGroups/ToolChain [3] Linaro uses the same toolchain benchmark as Google compiler team does: https://wiki.linaro.org/Platform/Android/UpstreamToolchain