Intel Porting Android To x86 For Netbooks and Tablets 163
According to Liliputing, Intel is bringing the sweet eye candy of Android to x86, which — if all goes well — means it will land on (more) netbooks and tablets soon. I'm more excited about ARM-based tablets, for their current advantage in battery life, but the more the merrier, when it comes to breaking up the tight circle of OSes available for any given arbitrary class of computing devices. Given all the OS swings that the OLPC project has gone through, maybe it should be thinking of Android, too.
if you want to put it on your machine now (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.android-x86.org/ [android-x86.org]
Re:if you want to put it on your machine now (Score:5, Informative)
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So what happened to Chrome OS?
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HAve to agree.
Chrome OS was a nice publicity gag but Android simply has more to offer and combined with the know-how from the Chrome browser it should make for a nice solution where a fully grown Linux distro would be too much for the hardware.
Re:if you want to put it on your machine now (Score:4, Informative)
Probably not, but I hope they will at least write drivers for their own wireless cards that are in use in existing netbooks (mine has WiFi from Intel).
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By the way, as far as WiFi goes, Android is just Linux, so far as I can see. At least I've spotted /etc/wpa_supplicant there. So it should just use normal Linux wireless drivers, no? And same for other stuff, except for video?
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If memory serves he's a bit too fond of unicode for my tastes, but generally I'd say that yes, he does.
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I say this an extremely avid Android and Linux user. Putting
Android on a mouse/keyboard device makes about as much sense
as putting Windows 7 on a tablet. Probably even less as although
99.999 percent of the Windows ecosystem will never work well on
a tablet, at least win7 can be made to work well enough. Android
and all of its 50000+ apps are designed with a capacitive touch screen and a finger in mind. Google gets this. That's why there are no official
Google ports of Android to netbooks. Where is everybody else's
malfunction coming from?
The funny thing though is that a basic touchscreen film for a netbook can be had for $20-$40 retail - sure it won't do multitouch, but most apps don't actually need that...
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What do you mean "basic touchscreen film"? EEE 701 and Aspire D250 are both $60 or more on ebay, which is typically well below retail. Where do I get them for $40 retail?
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Google "touch screen film usb"
But even at $60 or $80, converting x86 netbook to touchscreen its far from impossible or even impractical
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There's no reason why a properly designed OS can't handle more than one input method. I agree that taking a conventional desktop OS and adding multitouch as "a bag on the side" might well feel and act like a kludge. But going in the other direction shouldn't be an issue - if it's designed that way from the start. Graceful degradation plus flexibility in event mapping.
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So all those new netbooks with touch screens and optional keyboard/mouse setup will be left with no OS at all by your logic!
Where do I go to buy one of these? What you're describing sounds like one of those convertible laptops with the screen that flips around. They have almost always came with resistive screens and Windows and have been a decidedly niche product. Now, if you're talking about something with a capacitive multi-touch capable screen with some kind of detachable keyboard, I'd have to think about it. Though, off hand, it sounds like a job for Meego since it's more of a traditional Linux so older applications that
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Lenovo has such product recently.
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Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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When tech companies compete, the consumer wins because of more choices in the market.
And when tech companies do not compete, the consumer becomes a slave to lock-in and 'the share holders bottom line'
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And when tech companies do not compete, the consumer becomes a slave to lock-in and 'the share holders bottom line'
Of course, this does not hold for google.
But do apps work with x86? (Score:2)
But will current android apps with this port? In other words, are apps interpreted or binary?
If they are binary, then google has to make sure developers make a universal binary, like apple did with their PPC->intel transistion.... or this effort will be DOA.
Re:But do apps work with x86? (Score:4, Informative)
Most apps should work. It's just Java, after all!
The ones that need porting are things that have native code in them. In which case they need to be recompiled. Not sure if there exists a universal binary format for Android to support this though, but I'm assuming it's regular ELF at the lowlevel so there's a chance.
There's also MIPS android as well - MIPS wants to get back into the phone game. Would be interesting to see a triple architecture binary...
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More accurately, its a Java Virtual Machine. So long as the hardware runs the VM, most applications should not have a problem.
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It's not exactly that either. You enter Java - or at least, a language that has the Java syntax, not sure they can call it Java since it isn't J2ME or J2SE. What you get out to actually run on your phone isn't Java bytecode, but Dalvik bytecode.
Dalvik bytecode is portable, too, so it shouldn't be a problem for most apps. But there is also the Native Development Kit, which almost no one talks about... I guess stuff written in that won't be portable.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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At a recent speech, Steve Jobs quotes Nielsen US smartphone market share numbers. RIM 35%, iPhone 28%, Windows Mobile 19%, Android 9%.
Now there are good and not-so-good market researchers, but Nielsen is considered pretty prestigious. And 19% market share for Windows Mobile is a lot bigger than 9%.
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Browsing traffic is a much better indicator. We've had "smart phones" with Windows CE and its descendants for ages.
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Response to meego (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess this is a reponse to Meego 1.0 coming out for netbooks as a free download. I don't think meego will amount to much, but if it creates enough competition to push android ahead, that'll be cool.
Still... regarding Android on x86, I'd really prefer to see an ARM/OMAP-3 release, to run on N900s etc. There's a hack available now, but device drivers are still an issue.
More importantly... what's the status of Marketplace on this "port"? Is marketplace now open for anyone to use if they install Android? If not, this port will be useless, except as a dev platform or an interesting proof of concept.
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Oh, wow. I read this as Google is porting android. Intel porting android is a much more interesting bit of news. Either Intel is so big that they have multiple departments with the same goal, and completely contradictory strategies, or they've decided that Meego is crap already, and are abandoning it for Android.
Re:Response to meego (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps Intel is a company with more than a dozen employees, and is able to do more than one thing at a time.
It doesn't always have to be Dilbert-style "Battlin' Business Units", but there's no reason why the left hand can't work on something different than the right hand is.
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yes - companies can do more than one thing at once - however, business units are always in contention with eachother.
everyone's issues are the most prominent/most profitable/biggest money savers and thus should deserve immediate attention. that's how every business unit feels.
Re:Response to meego (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you say that?
Perhaps the goal, and always has since the beginning of Intel, is to sell more devices with Intel hardware, and they think Android on top of Meego will help get them to that goal? Perhaps they don't have ports for everything is because they don't QUITE have the manpower to pull that off.
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Because mobile phones are no longer just phones, or even just smartphones. They're becoming full-blown operating systems, which require long-term investment and long lifespans to be fully realised. As a result, people expect to see belief and commitment on the part of the companies pushing those operating systems. You can do that for one OS, but you can't hedge your bets and promote two completely different systems, like they're both the future you believe in and plan to create.
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Apple seems to be doing alright splitting their attention between Mac OS X and iPhone OS, although I did see gripes from some of their customers after their last developer conference regarding Mac OS X being treated as an afterthought. Yet the next Mac or i will likely still presell hundred of thousands of units sight-unseen.
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That's because OS X and iPhone have different markets. Note, however, that they're fundamentally the same OS underneath, allowing Apple to push similar development skills, and to combine the two as soon as devices fully converge.
Re:Response to meego (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, they've done what any sufficiently large organization does ... Don't leave money on the table. If you can collect from both piles, do it.
Intel wants to increase the market for all of their products. They're not going to let a little ideology about which is better stand in the way of generating money. There's a lot of hoopla surrounding mobile computing, and they don't want to get left behind.
Large companies frequently want to have it both ways. You 'or' isn't an 'xor' -- 'a or b' can actually be both.
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Microft wants lock-in. .Net only for Windows makes every software not portable, OpenXML makes other programs not open Office documents, etc. Sonny is a bit more complex, they are composed of two companies with oposite interests. None of this is ideology, unless you fit greed on the definition of "ideology" (i think you should, but most people won't).
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Sony hardware meant for music playback is pretty much as open as they get (nvm Ogg/etc. stuff, that's a niche). One other part of Sony would only like to change that, it seems.
Generally they are one of the best examples of how such companies are far from monolithic. Some divisions and their products are great; some...meh.
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Damn straight. Intel is a company that has always served multiple niches. Just as some people prefer Symbian, iPhoneOS, and Windows Mobiles, others will choose from Android and Meego. Smart move on their part to leave the all-in on a single platform strategy to other companies.
Re:Response to meego (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, wow. I read this as Google is porting android. Intel porting android is a much more interesting bit of news. Either Intel is so big that they have multiple departments with the same goal, and completely contradictory strategies, or they've decided that Meego is crap already, and are abandoning it for Android.
Hmm, I think it's more like, Intel is "afraid" of ARM processors, and wants to be an alternative for a device, no matter the OS. I bet they'd be porting iPhone OS to Intel if it was open... Also it doesn't sound too good for Intel imago-wise, if they aren't an option for both Android and Meego, but ARM is.
Also, Intel involvement with Android is quite different from their involvement with Meego, as far as I can see. So I don't think this tells anything about Intel-Meego, one way or another.
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Once you factor Google's ChromeOS in too, it starts to look even more incestuous.
Of course not all that surprising from Intel's perspective. They make their money from x86 chips, not selling software; they don't care what OS you run, as long as it runs on their hardware. If that means splashing a little cash on porting all the popular OSs to their hardware, I'm sure it's probably worth it for them.
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Meego? (Score:5, Interesting)
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I personally prefer the direction Intel was going with Moblin/Meego to Android. I wonder if this means Intel is going to leave Meego development up to Nokia?
Unlikely.
However, I wonder when there'll be first Android VM for Meego... Obviously with Android App Store support, or wouldn't be all that useful. Shouldn't be too hard, now should it?
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I was wondering the same thing ("MeeGo is now on Nokia's hands")
Well, one thing, this could be Intel cheating Nokia after Nokia cheated Intel porting MeeGo to ARM processors (or so it seems, from what I read somewhere.)
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Well, one thing, this could be Intel cheating Nokia after Nokia cheated Intel porting MeeGo to ARM processors (or so it seems, from what I read somewhere.)
Cheated? Somebody expected them to abandon their nxx0 users and hardware on Maemo?
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"Cheated"? MeeGo/Maemo is available on ARM since inception, Intel knew perfectly well what they're getting into.
And anyway, Symbian is the powerhouse on which Nokia will ride for a long time; MeeGo is a quite periphery project / expect experimentation and some shifts in direction.
What power advantage? (Score:2, Insightful)
In terms of performance per Watt, the Core i7 family beats ARM significantly, last I checked. In terms of idle performance, the ARM tears it up, of course, coming in at a quarter watt versus about ten times that for the Core 2 Duo. The Atom, in turn, slaughters comparable ARM CPUs in idle power, with comparable performance-per-watt, but has lower total performance-per-clock, IIRC.
What does this tell us? Maximizing battery performance of a device depends on expected load. For a device that's idle most o
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I can image an ARM in a "laptop". Because I'm using one right now in my iPad, which replaced the laptop I used to carry around. I looked at the number of times I actually need a full computer and it's not often anymore. I've gone from being a Geek to a more "typical" user. So far I have great battery life and plenty of power for email, skype, iWork, and websurfing. And with docking stations at home and the office I have a full keyboard when I have to write longer email messages or type up a proposal in
Re:What power advantage? (Score:4, Informative)
You are aware that ARM *started* as a computer CPU, and a desktop one at that (Acorn Archimedes)? People were doing very serious work on machines with much less power than an ARM mobile processor not so long ago.
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The Acorn Archimedes? The fricking Acorn Archimedes? [wikipedia.org] No, I did not know that. That is awesome, now I have a reason for rooting for them!
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LoB
Re:What power advantage? (Score:5, Insightful)
What does this tell us? It tells us you need to compare apples to oranges.
Compare a ARM SoC to a x86 processor and all its support chips.
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But what about an Atom SoC with integrated controllers (ie no support chips - at least none you'd not find on an ARM device) like the newest Atom offerings? You know, the Mooreland that doesn't have a PCI bus and competes favorably (middle of the field) against all the current smartphones with comparable specs (Apple's iPad and iPhone; Snapdragon, etc.)
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ARM has been in laptops previously:
http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/home/index.htm [alwaysinnovating.com] (btw, this came out last year)
Seems to work fine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snlp1yTmeyM&feature=related [youtube.com]
What planet are your figures from? (Score:5, Insightful)
In terms of performance per Watt, the Core i7 family beats ARM significantly, last I checked. In terms of idle performance, the ARM tears it up, of course, coming in at a quarter watt versus about ten times that for the Core 2 Duo. The Atom, in turn, slaughters comparable ARM CPUs in idle power, with comparable performance-per-watt, but has lower total performance-per-clock, IIRC.
Bizarro world, apparently. I just searched for the DMIPS/mW figures for a Core i7 and an ARM Cortex A8. Guess what, the first clue is that the Core i7 is listed in DMIPS/Watt. A Core i7 is about 1DMIPS/mW, while a Cortex A8 is about 16DMIPS/mW. The ARMs are an order of magnitude more efficient. I didn't really have to search - it's common knowledge in the industry and it's always funny seeing Slashdot articles and posts which haven't got this yet.
The Atom is still nowhere near: about 2DMIPS/mW. Even that sucks for idle consumption compared to pretty much anything ARM even from 5 years ago. Most ARM SoCs made for a portable device idle - and we're talking total system with background processing here - somewhere between 5-50mW depending on whether you're talking about an MP3 player or a big tablet. The clue, as always, is that Intel stuff is talked about in Watts, not milliwatts.
Basically the only thing Intel CPUs are better at is peak performance, and by a large margin. Not performance/watt. Not idling. Atom, when we're talking complete system, doesn't even have a peak performance advantage compared to Cortex-A9 based SoCs. And all that peak in an Core i7 goes to waste because you just don't need it for the target devices.
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Sorry, I was looking at performance-per-clock and thinking performance-per-watt. I retract that part of my comment. Idle performance, though, is better on Atom (if my numbers are right), assuming you ignore the rest of the chipset. (As you're no doubt aware, the Atom chipset power consumption is still embarrassingly high, but at least it has gone down from a couple of years ago by a large margin.)
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For a device that's idle most of the time (e.g. a phone), go with Atom
Utter rubbish. ARM idle power consumption is measured in microwatts, and has always been leagues more efficient of anything that an x86 core can do. If Atom is so good, why aren't there any phones based on Atom?
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Depends on which ARM chip you're talking about. The Cortex A8, if my numbers are right, idles at about a quarter watt. The Atom idle consumption is about 0.01W, more than an order of magnitude lower. Maybe my numbers are wrong---the manufacturers really try their hardest to avoid giving numbers that are in any way comparable across product lines....
As for why there aren't any phones based on Atom, I'm guessing that's more inertia than anything else. Why bother to port your OS and apps to a different CPU
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The Cortex A8, if my numbers are right, idles at about a quarter watt
I don't think that can be right, the numbers don't add up.
My HTC Desire has a 1400mAh 3.7v battery in it, which means there's 5.18Wh in a perfect battery. Even if we assumed that the only power consumption is the battery (ignoring the radio or other electronics), the maximum possible battery life wouldn't even get you though a day.
5.18 / 0.25 = 20.72 hours
Admittedly the phone has a Snapdragon which is only 'similar' to a Cortex, but the maths is suggesting that 0.25W must be out by an order of magnitude.
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5.18 / 0.25 = 20.72 hours
You're on the right track there but it isn't quite that cut and dry. A 5 Whr battery, yes, will run a 5 watt load for an hour. Thing is, it will actually run a 2.5 watt load for a bit more than 2 hours and so on. As the wattage gets lower and lower, it will run for more and more than you would expect just from the Whr rating itself. It gets pretty significant the lower and lower the draw is and .25 watt is pretty low.
Unfortunately, I don't have exact numbers but a few years ago,
I was doing a lot of st
I must agree. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been running Android 1.6 on an old eeepc 701 for quite a while now, thanks to the good folks over at android-x86.org [android-x86.org]. Android is quite well suited to a low power, small screen machine like the 701.
Also, consider this: When running the android bowser, more and more sites default to a mobile version. I've found that the mobile versions of many sites are preferable to the full versions. I suspect this is at least partly to do with the mobile interface being streamlined.
MS Will Not Be Amused (Score:3, Funny)
OLPC OS Swings? (Score:2)
OLPC/Android is coming (Score:3, Informative)
Given all the OS swings that the OLPC project has gone through, maybe they should be thinking of Android, too.
Funny you should mention that. According to Negroponte, XO-3 will most likely use Adroid. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/one-laptop-per-child-android-meet-dr-negroponte/3976 [zdnet.com]
Chrome OS? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Android for x86 -> x86 based tablets
ChromeOS -> netbooks
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Well... http://dev.chromium.org/chromium-os/user-experience/form-factors/tablet [chromium.org]
And where.... (Score:5, Interesting)
... Is Microsoft's tablet/small device OS?
Yes, there are "tablet" versions of Windows ever since XP, but where is the small, lightweight, finger friendly OS for tablets?
I brought this very fact up earlier in another post with regards to Microsoft's ability for growth here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1695766&cid=32667752 [slashdot.org]
Fine, we've got a computer on every desktop as Bill Gates dreamed, and Microsoft has 90 percent of the market, since the late 1990s. When this happened, the question to have been asked was "Now What?" Apparently nobody asked, not in 10 years, at least. They got soft. Complacent.
Vaporware and demo products don't count. I had someone honestly tell me that KIN was not meant to be profitable, or even good. What? Is this what softies actually believe?
Microsoft: Google is eating your lunch. Apple is eating your lunch. Every mobile device maker is eating your lunch.
Oh well. That's like telling the same thing to IBM in 1980s when the clone makers started making "IBM Compatible" PCs. IBM didn't listen then, and Microsoft won't listen now. The King never listens when he's been told he's naked.
--
BMO
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MS put self-imposed limits on what they want to view as their market anyway. 90%, sure; but that means a little over 1 billion PCs. A far cry from what mobile market is accomplishing.
ARM the Atom (Score:2)
I'm more excited about ARM-based tablets, for their current advantage in battery life...
This advantage seems to have gone away, more or less. ARM chips use less power because they're RISC, which means fewer transistors. And guess what? Intel's low-power Atom is also RISC (the complex x86 instruction set is emulated using "micro-ops") and seems to do OK with power consumption. My own Atom-based Netbook can make a battery last all day.
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This advantage seems to have gone away, more or less.
My own Atom-based Netbook can make a battery last all day.
Check this out. [liliputing.com] Standby time 180 hours. And by standby time, they mean the screen is off. Not "standby" as it is normally meant on regular desktops and laptops whereas the whole thing is off. The advantage there is instant on, not 1 second on, not 2. Instant. And while the screen is off, it can still be doing something. Checking your email, updating your rss feeds, whatever it would normally be doing. Basically, it's a continuous run device like a cell phone. And it's silent. And it generates lit
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Atoms aren't even on the same planet when it comes to power efficiency as ARM.
Nonsense. This is no longer true. Don't get me wrong - ARM still has a sizable lead, but to claim they're "not even on the same planet" is simply untrue. You would see at least same neighborhood batter life out of a well made Moorestown Atom based netbook with the same capabilities running the same OS.
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I think you misunderstand what "standby time" means. It definitely does not mean the screen is off but the rest of the system is active — you don't save that much power just by switching off the backlight! It appears to be equivalent to Windows Hybrid Sleep [mydigitallife.info], which also supports 1-second resumes. I don't use it myself, because Windows 7 can resume from plain hibernate mode (which uses no power at all) in 5 seconds, and draining the battery, even by such small amounts, is not worth saving 4 seconds.
The
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ATOM still sucks big time in performance/watt compared to a Cortex A8 or Cortex A9, heck the Cortex A9 is overall faster than any Atom offering.
It will be interesting that we see by the end of the year beginning of next year phones that are faster than the Atom based Netbooks, both in graphics performance and processor performance.
(Most of not all phones currently sold are Cortex A8 based)
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"Most of not all phones currently sold are Cortex A8 based"
Far from it. Large part of smartphones, yes, but even there certainly not "most" - Symbian has close to half of sales, and they are all ARM11 (I guess this might change in a year at the earliest - Symbian^4 basically breaks binary compatibility anyway, and with Cortex A5 available...). I don't think Blackberries are very different; and that's already much more than half.
But yeah, ARM has still a bright future. Heck, if one takes a closer look at the
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Nowadays almost all chips perform way better (or way way better) than they need to for the application at hand. If an Atom chip and an ARM chip consume the same amount of power and are both performing well enough, it doesn't matter if the ARM chip gives you more cycles per watt — it just means that the ARM chip has more cycles to waste.
ARM chips dominate cell phones for the same reason x86 chips dominate PCs: they grabbed a dominant market share early on. It says nothing about the superiority of one v
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It does not say anything about the superiority that ARM dominates but if you look at the raw numbers and general performance numbers also performance per watt numbers than you can see why no one really switches over from ARM to Intel in the non netbook space where Windows compatibility is a non issue.
Arm simply has the better overall architecture. Atoms and generally also is cheaper.
As soon as you count out the we need windows factor from any archtecture, Intel has lost the game with X86 everywhere. The arc
Just swell... (Score:2)
More fragmentation. Just what we needed.
Oh, wait. Fragmentation. The connotations are disturbing...
Re:Cant wait... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're going to switch to a new OS, which doesn't run any of your existing apps anyway, why care about what processor its using?
ARM is far more power for the battery usage, using x86 without some paradigm shift would be taking a step backwards.
Just go buy a Droid or an iPhone rather than wait for some bad version of the existing technology to come around.
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Jepp I do not know where Intel wants to go with this, ARM is in the Embedded world where Intel is in the Desktop world and so far their only argument, it runs windows (the other one is we have the worst processor instruction set ever designed in human history) does not hold a candle in the embedded world.
The issue I see is, unless Intel drops their instruction set entirely and they cannot beat Arm in the Performance/Watt game.
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If it will be only "on par", what difference does the x86 make? (well, besides waiting for huge improvements in battery technology and process shrinkage to have the same level of experience, of course)
You missed it (Score:3, Interesting)
Cloud-based touch-centric resource efficient virtual desktops running on x86 virtual machines, from any client running any architecture.
What this means, literally, is that Intel has decided not to go down with the ship.
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Really? Because I'm using an iPad right now in the form of a computer because it replaced my MacBook Pro. It seems to have plenty of horsepower to run browsers, iWork, and Skype. Which is pretty much what I ran on my old laptop and that is what most people using desktops are doing. Seems to be powerful enough to do what I, and most people not on Slashdot, need.
Re:Great news (Score:4, Interesting)
How many USB ports did your old MacBook have?
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I think not many people realize that an iPad is tethered to some sort of PC/laptop which runs iTunes. It looks like it will replace the desktop/laptop for a lot of things. But since you have to sync it for music, movies and updates, it becomes an additional expense -- BESIDES the desktop/laptop. Not only an expense, but it's an additional desktop/laptop to maintain as well. Maintenance costs time.
Apple wants to have your money. And you're going to pay it.
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No kidding. OP needs to dial down the fanboi-ism a bit. I like android quite a bit, but it's not due to "sweet eye candy" of which there is precious little present by default. Android is notable foremost because it works nicely for certain use cases (small form factor touch screens, small focused micro applications) not because it looks pretty.
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sweet eye candy of Android to x86
Really?
Pointing out to delusional people that they are delusional is rarely productive.
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I'd love to have that functionality in my android phone.
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In this context it is impossible to say, because Apple actually makes their own Free and open source OS, and gives it away to anybody who wants it.
They do? Which one?
It'll be fun to see how ugly, slow, and choppy Android is on a bigger screen though. I was actually shocked to discover how awful it really is.
Ahh..So the SCREEN is what defines the speed of the device..
Silly me.. All these years I've been upgrading processors and video cards.. I could have just got a smaller screen and had a faster computer..
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Its called Darwin and it has existed for years and years. It is a blend of FreeBSD and Mach, with quite a bit of other innovative stuff thrown in for good measure. I am surprised that you never heard about it.
In all honesty.. Never heard of it. I stand enlightened.
Not at all. I just think it will be funny to see people attempting to use Android as a replacement for a netbook.
Why? Is it really any stranger a concept than putting another phone OS on a netbook with no keyboard?
There is not only no reason why a netbook can't have a touch screen, but it has already been done. So not limited to a tiny track pad or optical sensor of some kind for any physical reason.
A phone OS if anything is a better fit for a small screen netbook than an OS more normally associated with and designed for a full sized computer. Windows on a small