Announcement: Linaro ARM Optimized Toolchain for Android platform
Jim Huang
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/
Of course, there is always room for improvement as far toolchain and
system level performance. Feel free to give the feedback and discuss
on mailing-list:
http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev
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