Android Tweaks May Double Performance

Galaxy Nexus handset owners now have access to tweaks for Google’s Android mobile operating system that have been reported to double performance in some areas.

The tweaks were developed by Linaro, a not-for-profit engineering group formed in 2010 by chip designer ARM along with Freescale Semiconductor, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments.

Galaxy Nexus build

The optimisations are available right away for Galaxy Nexus handsets via a build of the CyanogenMod 9 (CM9) firmware released over the weekend. CyanogenMod allows users to replace their standard handset firmware with a modified version that features additional features.

Linaro demonstrated its optimised version of Android 4.04 at the Linaro Connect Q2.12 event in Hong Kong two weeks ago.

Running on Texas Instruments’ OMAP 4430 processor, the same used in Motorola’s RAZR handsets, the tweaked software rendered graphics at 60 frames per second (fps), compared to 30 fps for the standard Android code, according to the demonstration by Linaro engineer Bernhard Rosenkränzer.

Linaro achieved the performance improvements via modifications including the use of its own toolchain, which includes a newer compiler optimised for the ARM architecture, according to Rosenkränzer.

Linaro’s work consolidates and optimises code for ARM, including tinkering with the GCC toolchain, the Linux kernel, as well as power management, graphics and multimedia interfaces.

More handsets to be supported

Ultimately Linaro wants Google to incorporate its changes into future versions of Android, beginning with Jelly Bean, but in the meantime has submitted its work to CyanogenMod and other replacement firmware projects such as MIUI.

The unofficial CM9 build released over the weekend supports only Galaxy Nexus devices, but when the official CyanogenMod 9 build is released it will support a wider range of devices from HTC, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and others.

ARM is already widely used in mobile devices such as smartphones, and has more recently begun challenging Intel in the server market.

Calxeda, which last autumn announced a partnership with Hewlett-Packard to develop very low-power systems running on ARM-based processors, in May showed off a prototype server powered by its EnergyCard compute blades at the Ubuntu Developer and Cloud Summit in Oakland, California. The system ran the Ubuntu 12.04 operating system, running a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) software stack running the company’s website, as well as other software, including Ruby-on-Rails.

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