Intel Confirms That Android 3.0 Is Coming To x86 Tablets 152
timothy writes "Considering that x86 and ARM have been playing leapfrog in at least their future *promised* efficiencies, and that there are a ton of x86 tablets in the works, it's good to see cross-platform OS choices. The most popular Linux distro (Ubuntu) as well as several other conventional Linux options, Windows (even if so far confined to tech demos), and Android — interesting mix."
What about Meego? (Score:2, Interesting)
Meego is really dead, then.
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To head off the stupidity before it infects Slashdot, no.
Intel sells processors. Any OS that will run on their processors is OK by their standards.
Of course, contributing to Android is to undermine open source as a whole, seeing as how they continue to hide the Honeycomb source but deliver it to Intel. If you truly appreciate open source and want it to succeed in the mobile space, you should support and push for MeeGo (and stop buying shit from companies like Motorola.)
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Intel doesn't manufactures any ARM processors, do they? Which is probably what's going on there. An attempt to derail the OS by adding in support for their own processors. Given how they've been behaving, I wouldn't be surprised if they started leaning really hard on anybody using ARM chips with Android.
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Intel can't do that though, they don't control the OS. And they have no real foothold in the mobile space to do that with just yet.
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You mean like every single phone manufacturer in the world? Intel doesn't even have horse in the race below the tablet level, ARM is pretty much the only game in town for ultra mobile deceives like phones and PDAs.
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You mean like every single phone manufacturer in the world? Intel doesn't even have horse in the race below the tablet level, ARM is pretty much the only game in town for ultra mobile deceives like phones and PDAs.
Yes, pretty much. It's no secret that Intel wants to get into ARMs market, having Android run on x86 is a start. Or at least make sure the battle lines are as far towards ultra mobile as they can. I imagine they're looking at a reverse iPhone -> iPad, first get their CPU in tablets then bring out a smartphone version.
I know ARM has and probably ever will have an advantage in the ultra-low power dumb phone game. But "entertainment" phones have a much higher power budget when playing, it's not certain ARM
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I guess it comes down to can intel beat a dual core 2 Ghz ARM?
Intel just wants to take away a piece of the market from ARM processors. Once the netbooks went down the hill intel was fucked and a lot of their roadmap was relying on the netbook market, which is now dead. The new tablet and high-end smartphones market doesn't even remember who intel is.
Re:What about Meego? (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess it comes down to can intel beat a dual core 2 Ghz ARM?
Yes, easily. Can they beat them in the same power budget? Will the ARM do as much per clock cycle as the Intel? Those are better questions. ARM has a lot to learn about high performance chips. Intel has a lot to learn about low power chips. I wouldn't be so quick to wager ARM can learn Intel's tricks faster than Intel can learn ARM's tricks.
The Atom wasn't targeting ARM, it was more about choking AMD by creating a very low cost, low power chip that'd steal a lot of the "value" market from AMD with battery life AMD couldn't match. In that I would argue it was a success and has been a thorn in AMDs side until the Brazos platform launched this year. It is of course a stepping stone on the way to competing with ARM, but it's hardly the best Intel can do.
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AMD has Athlon 64 processors on a power budget competitive with Atom, but they gave up on them. I'm typing this comment using a machine powered by one right now. The only operating system it supports properly is Vista. AMD never bothered to even contribute support for its power saving to Linux, and they don't make downloads for the processor or the chipset available, you have to get them through your OEM. And the only support files are for Vista. The machine has a pretty peppy ATI integrated GPU, which agai
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Unfortunately for Intel, they will bolt their crappy GPU to it, whereas ARM can weld much better GPU's with their CPU and totally kick Intel's ass.
You mean their GMA graphics? Like the ones that use the Power VR? The same Power VR architecture that is used in many ARM devices including the ipad and ipad2?
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Intel still holds a full ARM license. They sold the XScale to Marvell, but retained a license. Why couldn't they build ARM again?
Re:What about Meego? (Score:4, Informative)
Intel still builds ARM processors. Their entire line of "IO Processors" are basically dual-core ARM chips used for RAID cards. Adaptec and Highpoint both use these chips, for example.
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Re:What about Meego? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, contributing to Android is to undermine open source as a whole, seeing as how they continue to hide the Honeycomb source but deliver it to Intel. If you truly appreciate open source and want it to succeed in the mobile space, you should support and push for MeeGo (and stop buying shit from companies like Motorola.)
Really? http://www.androidcentral.com/gpl-portions-honeycomb-entered-aosp [androidcentral.com]
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Yeah, probably only related to changes made to the kernel as everything else is Apache licensed. Nothing of use or real value, seeing as how little of it ever gets into the mainline, and nothing contributed to any other parts of Android help any other open source software.
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As though that were in any way unusual.
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Unusual, no. Crap, yes.
Re:What about Meego? (Score:4, Informative)
In fact it wouldn't be a stretch to say that Linux/BSD/et al just isn't suitable for phones.
Doesn't the iPhone run on a modified BSD kernel? If so, it would seem odd that pretty much every smart phone runs on an operating system that isn't suitable for phones.
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Actually IOS runs on darwin which the Mach kernel makes up the foundation of. The rest of the system is BSD based though. Oh hell, to clarify here is the wikipedia entry on it:
"Darwin is built around XNU, a hybrid kernel that combines the Mach 3 microkernel, various elements of BSD (including the process model, network stack, and virtual file system),[5] and an object-oriented device driver API called I/O Kit.[6]
Some of the benefits of this choice of kernel are the Mach-O binary format, which allows a singl
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What kind of ignorant comment is this? Can you say why? I'd be shocked if you can.
Point blank: bullshit.
Actually, the compan
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Actually, the company developing Android before Google bought them chose Linux for the same reason TiVO and many other vendors do: opportunistic leeching on the community, while none of their changes ever make it back into the core.
Then they shouldn't have released the code under a license that allowed people to do so. If you want people to be obligated to give back you should have written it as an additional clause in the license. Being butthurt after the fact and then trying to impose a whole bunch of unwritten rules on people on tends to make them either go away or just ignore you even more.
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Actually, the company developing Android before Google bought them chose Linux for the same reason TiVO and many other vendors do: opportunistic leeching on the community, while none of their changes ever make it back into the core.
You just said wrt the changes made to the kernel that there is "Nothing of use or real value, seeing as how little of it ever gets into the mainline" [slashdot.org] but then you call it 'opportunistic leeching'? So it's only not leeching if they contribute back something that you deem to be of value? In any case since they abide by the GPLv2 under which Linux is licensed their changes are available. So i'm not sure how you can call it 'opportunistic leeching'.
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Its probably only a matter of time before the android kernel is forked from linux outright......
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On the other hand, the Android embedded 'Linux fork' and the dalvik VM may become irrelevant when the class libraries are decoupled from the platform, as in IcedRobot.
Re:What about Meego? (Score:4, Interesting)
That is a short-sighted perspective. There are some "real world" considerations to be think through.
Open Source, the way we know and love it today, is filled with projects that struggle with direction. GNOME, KDE and other extremely well known projects suffer from having too many people in charge. Meanwhile, commercial projects have the advantage of having stronger direction which is great from a perspective of getting a project planned, built and "completed."
(I know, I will catch hell even for talking about this but go ahead... say what you're gonna say.)
Google is attempting to keep the project as open as it can while still maintaining its direction. As has been said, Honeycomb was designed for a higher resolution display and offers functionality intended for a specific set of capabilities. So in addition to being an OS, it is also an "experience" that needs to be consistent and reliable. It WILL be released. Of that I am certain, but I believe Google is trying to maintain a strong direction element in the project so that this open source project will have the same advantages as Windows and Mac OS X.
And keep in mind that this tablet computing is a new format of computing. It is one in which Microsoft cannot successfully participate at this time. Therefore, this time is crucial for the development of this OS platform and for the tablet market in general. If ever there was a way to take Microsoft down, it is through a market in which they cannot compete and interfere. They can't do tablets and they can't do phones (tiny tablets).
I think Google is doing the right thing at the moment. But I guess time will tell.
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Which is beside the point, as the kernel itself has a small number of people that decide which way things go, but is wildly successful at achieving
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Really? Do you have any statistics on the ship rate of commercial projects vs open source projects?
Because even though it is readily apparent that o
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I think you mean, an OS developed under the banner of the Linux Foundation with support from SuSE and Intel that can't be arbitrarily taken and held closed on a whim. Nokia is mostly peripheral, though they were decent up until the point that MS "bought" them.
Please, make stupid statements elsewhere.
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Honeycomb is just an example of how Google could arbitrarily close the source of their AND YOUR changes. Android, as a whole, takes from opensource but does not contribute, and is incompatible with the rest of what exists in the open source realm solely due to the fact that it was supposed to be closed source an proprietary.
The AOSP, really, is a disaster. When you have to download
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Honeycomb is just an example of how Google could arbitrarily close the source of their AND YOUR changes.
Outside of the Linux kernel (which they did release the code for) how many contributors who have actually had their changes incorporated into the other parts Android weren't part of the OHA or already partnered up with Google?
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Honeycomb is just an example of how Google could arbitrarily close the source of their AND YOUR changes.
Outside of the Linux kernel (which they did release the code for) how many contributors who have actually had their changes incorporated into the other parts Android weren't part of the OHA or already partnered up with Google?
Regardless of that, google can't just close the source of those changes, all they can do is stop re-distributing them.
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Honeycomb is just an example of how Google could arbitrarily close the source of their AND YOUR changes.
No they can't, your changes are still open. It's just that derivative works can be closed - which is obvious given they used a permissive Open Source license - that does NOT change the license on the code you submitted in the slightest.
Out of Order Execution (Score:2)
ARM has it since Cortex A9
How is it coming along for the Intel Atom?
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What benefit of out-of-order? (Score:3)
Re:What benefit of out-of-order? (Score:4, Insightful)
In that case, the compiler will already have reordered the instructions to fit Atom's microarchitecture.
Sort of. There's not much a compiler can do when you have a last-level (L2, L3) cache miss, which takes hundreds of clocks to service. Even an L1 miss hurts somewhat. OOO processors can execute other, independent instructions for which it has data available in registers or in the L1, and which are in the processor's OOO execution window. In-order processors can't do much. Atom does have some limited ability to hide cache miss latency via some bypassing around L1 misses, but not as much as true OOO.
And what is the benefit of out-of-order compared to simultaneous multithreading [wikipedia.org]?
SMT gets you throughput on multiple threads, for a cheaper area/power budget than just stamping another core down on the die. Obviously it's not as good as another real core, but for some applications that lightly load the processor, for example memory-bound or I/O-bound apps, it is pretty good. It does nothing for single-thread performance however; it can even hurt it single-thread IPC, in fact.
Intel (Score:4, Insightful)
Easy to see why Intel thinks it's worth using X86 for Android devices. Hard to see why anyone else would think it's a good idea - except perhaps AMD.
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Well with Android I just don't see the value but with Windows I do. At least with a Windows X86 tablet you will look like a PC so idiotic websites like Hulu and CBS.com will not restrict content because you are on a "mobile" device or on an "embedded device" and not a laptop or PC.
I can watch Big Bang Theory on my laptop but not on phone because??? And if I hook a box to my TV like Boxee it is different than watching it on my pc because???
Other than that I would agree but I do wish that we where seeing more
Failure (Score:2)
.. to realize that mobile is the new desktop. And devices that do one thing really well are better than devices that try to do everything not very well.
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???
A desktop does a large number of things not one thing really well. mobile is the new desktop... So mobile must do many things well and not one thing really well? Or it isn't really the new desktop and should stay specialized mobile device that isn't as flexible as the desktop?
You are really contradiction yourself.
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Don't know about your phone, but as far as boxee goes...
You're still allowing direct egress from clients on your network, which is wrong, and our your http(s) proxy is for some reason not striping information that could identify a specific client behind your gateway like user agent strings, which is wrong.
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And the average consumer.. Of course it is hackable.
I don't have a Boxee I got a ROKU which is really cool and cheap.
What HTTPS proxy? (Score:2)
your http(s) proxy is for some reason not striping information that could identify a specific client behind your gateway like user agent strings, which is wrong
What HTTPS proxy? A proxy is a man in the middle, exactly the sort of thing HTTPS is designed to prevent. In order to make an HTTPS proxy work, one would first have to add the proxy's root certificate to the device so that the proxy can sign its own TLS certificates. And as I understand it, tivoized devices are designed specifically not to allow this.
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You can do this now [android-x86.org], albeit with Android 2.2.
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Likewise, it'd be nice to be able to run DOSbox on a tablet with good performance. I've got DOSbox on my iPad, and its emulated x86 CPU is good enough for some old DOS software, but performance is not spectacular.
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There's the Android-x86 Project [android-x86.org]. I had an older build booting off a USB key on my netbook. Quite frankly, all I found it good for was as a reminder that a UI designed for a 3" touch screen is a poor, poor fit for a 9" screen with a trackpad and keyboard.
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Yeah... I have it on my parallels 6.0 running as a VM on my Mac. Still haven't done much with it, but I thought I would like to play with it.
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I'm surprised even Intel is interested. Nobody is interested in non-Apple tablets. RIM's playbook was a dud, the XOOM sold basically nothing, the Galaxy did okay, but only if you don't measure it against iPad sales.
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Just look at google news. Bank's stock market analysts have the numbers now. here is one [barrons.com] that describes sales as "light." It is not surprising because all the reviews appear to say the product is not done (you will have to google for those yourself).
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Give me a break. They released a tablet that works only when tethered to one of their embarrassingly obsolete smartphones. Who would expect a scheme like that to succeed against Apple?
Blackberry brought a flashlight to a gunfight. What sort of drugs they're smoking in the executive suite is anybody's guess.
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You wrote, "It's funny people are still in denial about the success of Android. Sure, uptake of Android tablets is not as spectacularly crazy as the iPad's (not even close)"
Who is in denial again?
Before Android tablets: as soon as there are Android tablets the iPad is gone.
After first Android tablets released: these are so much better, the iPad is gone.
After real sales numbers returned on Android tablets: in just a few generations the iPad is gone.
I agree that the iPad (or any other Apple product) will prob
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Easy to see why Intel thinks it's worth using X86 for Android devices. Hard to see why anyone else would think it's a good idea
What's the point of running it on x86 when all the app out there are compiled for ARM? Unless they're planning to ship with both families of CPU in one device and support both Windows and Android apps, it really doesn't make much sense. If x86 has been too power hungry, emulating ARM or something would likely be pretty poor in the performance per Watt department.
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You do realize that android runs on the dalvik virtual machine and that most of the code is basically java right? They are therefore compiled for dalvik as bytecode. 2.2 added support for JIT. In my experience with a G1, JIT doesn't make a huge difference in the real world because there are penalties for using it as well, especially when it comes to opening apps. There are also examples of native code, say C++ compiled for arm v6 processors, but I would imagine every app out there is running purely on the V
Atom vs. ARM (Score:3)
I have an ARM based tablet running Android 2.3. Why would I want to use Android on x86? Is it really that much faster?
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the point isn't that you can use android on x86 (chips will always leapfrog eachother season to season on performance capabilities)
the point is that once android does support x86, theoretically there could be more tablet homogenization - a company could release the same model running both android and, say, windows, or you could purchase one and install your favorite linux distro, customized to suit the tablet
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But it will lead to app fragmentation because you will have to include X86 as well as arm in the binaries for any program that uses the NDK. Which will increase the size of the apps or you will have to include an ARM to X86 JIT compiler or maybe an ARM to X86 install time compiler.
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Since most *apps* are compiled to Dalvik bytecode, most developers won't care. Not many features/apps require use of the NDK. Durr.
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As a past embedded, kernel, and driver developer, I'm always tempted to laugh at people who think they "need to program closer to the hardware", but I usually refrain and ask them these questions instead:
If the answers to all of
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That depends how low you feel you must go. Now that Dalvik is a JIT there is probably less need but still not zero. And yes I agree with you that one should do all of the above but the leap from Dalvik to C++ using OS calls is not exactly what I would consider bit banging the hardware. Now bypassing the OS and going to the hardware... Well that is just not what one should do on a Mobile device IMHO.
I am pretty sure that a lot of games use the NDK and OS calls for a bit more speed.
Oh and I have worked on Lin
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It is lovely and at the same time scary just how much OO has creeped into the Linux kernel [vilimpoc.org], just out of pure necessity. It's been awhile since I've had to hack on the Linux kernel, but I'm glad to hear things have continued to improve.
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Actually, I don't think I'm all that qualified; I've never written my own OS. But looking at people that have (Torvalds, Tannenbaum, Ritchie, et al), I would have to say that a programming language that wants to be used for OS implementation will have to displace C. That is, it needs to have the power of C (low-level HW access at a minimum), but also have that something little extra that g
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Ah, I didn't see the GP; I was assuming they were referring to coding things in assembly; to me, /that's/ low-level. One of my big gripes with Android has always been that they want you to rewrite applications in Java. There's so much open source out there that's not Java that I think that approach is foolish. Heck, in my fa
Applications ported from another platform (Score:2)
Syntax error (Score:2)
If you use a strongly pointer typed dialect, like C++/CLI, writing a compiler wouldn't be and issue
Compiling a program written in the verifiably type-safe subset of C++/CLI in a compiler for standard C++ invariably produces a parse error. This is due to the different syntaxes for declaring pointers, references, arrays, and possibly other core language features that I can't think of at the moment. This would mean every software developer would have to write its own C++/CLI compiler for those target platforms that don't already have a C++/CLI compiler.
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Android has an NDK.
I was referring to what Belial6 wrote [slashdot.org]: "I would hope that it actually helps by discouraging anyone from using the NDK that doesn't absolutely have to."
ARM NDK vs. x86 NDK (Score:2)
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Antecedents please (Score:2)
You don't need one - install it somewhere
I don't need what? Install what somewhere? I'm having trouble figuring out to which of the nouns in my last post each of your pronouns refers. Do you mean "I don't need an interpreter - install an interpreter somewhere"? That doesn't make sense. Or are you trying to draw a fine distinction between a purely interpretive interpreter, which is likely to be unbearably slow at executing legacy NDK applications, and an interpreter that also has JIT recompilation?
set the appropriate field in the application binary to point to the interpreter path
Where might the interpreter happen to be?
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Re:Atom vs. ARM (Score:4, Insightful)
We are already seeing Intel paying vendors to push out x86 devices so they'll also be taking Microsoft's funny money because on x86 they can throw Windows while on ARM they can not. Consumers lose because of the lack of choice and they'll lose because the x86 and Windows solutions will not have the staying power in the portable device segment because of the bloat. IMO
LoB
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Well, Microsoft already announced that they're doing ARM for Windows, so looks like it's going to happen either way.
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So they could but lots more ducks need to get lined up before
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I would suggest linpack and povray.
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Yuh. The atom should decimate when it comes to floating point.
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I have an ARM based tablet running Android 2.3. Why would I want to use Android on x86? Is it really that much faster?
Most consumers don't give a diddle about arm vs x86, they just want a tablet that works. Intel wants in on some of the tablet money running around and this is their only way in. Meanwhile it'll also give the consumers more choice and nvidia/qualcomm/arm/whoever more competition keeping innovation running. Wins all round as far as I can see.
and how will this work (Score:3)
Adobe already requires each phone manufacture to send their phones to adobe to make sure flash might work on the platform, with a whole other processor to support for the same OS adobe will never be able to keep up.
Re:and how will this work (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares? If Adobe can't keep up (entirely their own problem) then they will fade away.
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Already faded.
How do I make SVG cartoons? (Score:3)
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Keep up looking out for the little guy for us all. Thanks!
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Yeah, and OS X (Score:1)
Great to see Apple's architecture agnosticism is catching on.
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How long until they sue someone.
Who haven't they sued yet?
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Great to see Apple's architecture agnosticism is catching on.
Android has always been reasonably portable. The kernel is Linux after all, and most of the user land doesn't care too much aside from JIT / interpretter code. Indeed Android has been running on x86 [androidx86.org] and MIPS [mipsandroid.org] processors for a while now.
Biggest issue are probably native apps. I don't understand why there is no LLVM target so that devs don't have to care or worry what processor is running in the tablet / phone / box but still benefit from native runtime performance. Curiously Renderscript (a new API) in 3.0
Perhaps Ubuntu for phones would be better (Score:2)
I would rather have a slim Ubuntu on my phone than have Android on my x86 box/slate/tablet/whatever.
There are plenty of good operating systems out there and I would rather not have Google's also-ran, closed-source OS in front of me.
Intel as main MeeGo supporter (Score:3)
So it means that MeeGo is even more dead? Intel was last standing supporter if it, and now Intel is interested in different, competing OS. Sad.
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Go read my response near the start of this topic. No, MEEGO IS NOT DEAD. People should think before they vomit all over Slashdot.
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Am I the only one that is excited at the prospect of say like a dual core atom running at 2ghz in a tablet form? I mean think of all the emulation you could do with that, and likely get at least 4-5 hours to boot. You could even dualboot to windows for some stuff, as well as run ubuntu more than half decently. Just include USB so you can plug in a mouse and keyboard..... I mean seriously. How is this not full of win? Arm makes a lot of sense in, say a phone, or an embedded device, but a tablet might as well