Android It is mostly running ARM-based hardware, but there are attempts to bring it to other platforms. One of them is the well-known x86 platform used by many of the PCs and laptops, the other is MIPS, which is used in mostly Linux-based embedded systems, and lately in Android.
Intel already showed us Gingerbread running in an Atom Medfield, scheduled for production during the first half of 2012. Medfield It is a 32nm SoC which is supposed to be an Intel x86 solution for smartphones / tablets, but also Intel says it is more efficient than processors ARM current, what is not yet clear is how it compares with other ARM SoC solutions, such as with Krait from Qualcomm, also scheduled for delivery in early 2012.
Alec gefrides, running the Google Program Office, said than "there was a version of Android 4.0 for Medfield in the works one day after Google released the OS source code, and now packages for smartphones and tablets with Medfield drivers are available to device manufacturers.“Gefrides added that the drivers will be open source when their respective devices are available on the market, in order to avoid Android fragmentation.
Meanwhile, a group of enthusiasts led by Chih Wei Huang has worked on porting various versions of Android to various x86 platforms. Some of the previous ports have been deprecated, but others are available, including Gingerbread, Honeycomb, and the ICS. Huang ported Honeycomb to x86 by himself, because Google hasn't opened the source code at the moment, but he had access to the code and his company is a Google partner. As for ICS, video, sound, camera, and Ethernet hardware acceleration are not working yet. The main problem seems to be the lack of drivers.
Huang was interviewed, from which I leave here some excerpts:
InfoQ: What is the status of ICS / x86? What has been done so far, and what still needs to be done?
CWH: We have ported ICS android-4.0.1_r1 to the x86 platform for various machines, and we have also released the source code to the public. However, with the exception of the AMD Brazos platform, the other computers on the Intel platform are not working due to a video card problem. We are still having trouble getting Intel hardware acceleration to work properly. Wi-Fi and multitouch from some vendors should work fine. Sound, camera and Ethernet not working yet.
We have tested GMS (Google applications such as GMail, Google Maps and the Market) as well as some games (eg Defender and Fruit Slice), and they have worked well.
InfoQ: How much time and staff do you think you need to carry Honeycomb? How long do you think it will take to carry ICS?
CWH: That depends on what the goal of porting is. I had a hard time carrying Honeycomb, because at first it was not Open Source. I was able to get hold of the Honeycomb code since my company was a Google partner, but the problem is that I couldn't share this code, so I spent a long time working entirely alone. Fortunately ICS is Open Source, and has better x86 support. We successfully brought it to Arms with hardware acceleration in just two weeks. But there are still some problems (as I said above) to solve. Also, as this is being developed in my spare time, it is difficult to actually give a deadline or say when it would be ready, however, I hope that the Open Source community will help to solve these problems more quickly than it was with Honeycomb .
InfoQ: What are the main challenges when porting Android to x86?
CWH: Lack of developers. Actually the only active developer since the project started (June 2009) is myself. We have about 2600 registered people on our mailing list, but very few join development as such. Some have joined and then left the project, either because they don't have time available or because they have lost interest. Fortunately, I have good friends in the Open Source community, who excel in some technical aspects and are always ready to help me. For example, Chia-I Wu on OpenGL ES and Benjamin on touchscreen drivers. The most novices enter the forum to ask questions, many times without providing enough technical information, so I can't help them, but not that ... even though they provide enough information, many times I don't have the device they have, so I don't I can do testing and debugging so your issues remain unsolved. Also, some vendors like Viewsonic and Insyde package and sell Android-x86 products, but they never contribute much less to development. This makes us feel sad and angry. Intel doesn't care about us, they have their own version of Android developed by themselves, but they never release it for everyone. This obviously makes us frustrated. AMD started working with us recently, but they are still in the early stages. We hope to see more contributions from them in the future.
InfoQ: Are there any plans from AMD or another company to use your ports?
CWH: I think so, but they normally wouldn't tell us anything.
As for the MIPS, the company has moved all previous versions of Android to its processor architecture, and plans to release an ICS port in the middle of this month. Android 4.0 is based on the Linux 3.0.8 kernel, and getting this kernel to work on MIPS has already been achieved, so it won't take long to see ICS on your RISC platform.
The article ends here 🙂
Source: infoq.com
Good news: D, I just have a little doubt, it is true that android is "Very insecure" (backdoors, malware, etc) or are they just guesswork to destroy its progress?
I have not had the opportunity to try it, I do not have a tablet or smartphone: S. I would prefer an ereader 😀
Uff ... you ask at least indicated HAHA. The most "top" that I have been able to reach in terms of Smartphones, is to have my simple Nokia N70, nor dream of Android LOL !!!
Backdoors I've never heard of, but malware does exist, as it does in any other project. The detail is that Android is Open Source, but not only that, the Android Market in its beginnings made a lot of room for malware, and little by little they have increased their requirements and other details, this story is similar to what happened with Firefox and your malware addons a while back.
In summary, nowadays Android is (my opinion obviously) the best possible choice, not only because it surpasses the rest of the OS ... but because, come on ... it has a much more promising future yet 😀
Nah, not so much. What if there is malware, but very little ... there is only a 3% chance that you will find some, and if you spend it on pages like El Androide Libre, less than 1%. But there is a "Trojan" placed by the US operators, called Carrier IQ, which can know everything you do (be careful, they only put it in the US). Hey, it's the price you have to pay to be open source (?
Well no wonder the x86 project looks half abandoned. I have tested Honeycomb on a virtual machine and it shows the excellent job of adapting the touchpad and video driver to integrate it with netbooks.
I have a cell phone with Android 2.1 and I can tell you that there is a risk of malware, because when installing apps it asks for permissions and you don't know when you use them. Although it also depends on which application you download from the market, it is not the same to download Angry Birds than any other to steal Wi-Fi passwords. It all depends on the type of app we download.