Want an Android phone that’s 3x’s faster? Myriad wants to give it to you.
February 8, 2010 | by Andrew Kameka
A little-known member of the Open Handset Alliance has announced that it has discovered a way to juice-up Android’s performance 3-times as fast as current speeds. How? By replacing the standard Dalvik engine.
Myriad Group will debut Dalvik Turbo next week at Mobile World Congress. Turbo is said to allow “OEMs and operators to bring smoother delivery and more complex applications to Android phones, while also providing substantial battery life improvements when running resource intesive tasks.”
Dalvik is the virtual machine that runs Java (the language used to create apps) on Android. Without getting too technical, it converts and simulates certain elements to make Android apps run. All you really need to know is that this new technology would optimize the virtualization process, which would make apps on the next generation of devices perform the best they ever have on Android. It will also provide better battery life and graphics according to Myriad.
The Myriad-created Dalvik Turbo replaces the standard version that ships with Android, and has been retooled to support “rapid integration” on devices. It supports processors from ARM, Intel Atom and MIPS Architectures. Myriad will debut Davlik Turbo at MWC stand AV86 from February 15-18.
sounds good I how this can make its way in to older phones somehow
By 3rd party modders back porting this as it makes its way to current versions of android.
Yeah, I totally need this for my G1… it feels so slow when I know that there's a Nexus One out there that's faster but I can't get a new phone until the summer.
For such incredible news, why haven't I seen this featured on any other Android sites?!
the announcement for this went out late yesterday when a lot of people probably stopped blogging or missed it. you'll probably see this appear on other sites later today.
If it sounds too good to be true, it is not true.
I hope to get something like this in future. It would be really great to have this kind of device as it will really fast.
This sounds amazing. I hope the mod community gets their hands on this and are able to use it for the G1 somehow, because mine is really on its last legs, and I still have an entire year on contract =/
Don't feel like the Lone Ranger!
It sounds similar to the official JIT in the Android tree, which we'll probably see default on devices later this year.
This smells like BS to me. I know the JIT in the core Android tree is still a little unstable, but my guess is there is no way this is a clean room Dalvik implementation. They might have picked up the ball and ran a way with the JIT support outside the upstream tree BUT…
THIS is fragmentation. The problem with Java ME was that there were multiple runtime implementations that required "Write Once Debug Everywhere." That there is one VM runtime and cross-version runtime library support on devices has really saved developers from TONS of pain as Android has moved quickly from the milestone builds to 2.1.1. If people have to start dealing with multiple Dalviks, that will suck
Its very UNLIKELY to be too good to be true. The source drop Google did for the AOSP which contains the preliminary JIT is already 1.5-2.5 times faster than non-JIT Android. Google has made it VERY clear the JIT code drop was a very early version of the JIT which is lacking many internally available optimizations and stabilization improvements. Several of the JIT optimizations to which Google has made whispers, alone can make huge additional performance gains over and above what is already available in the AOSP code base.
I am not saying the speed promises are unreasonable. I question the compatibility/stability and the effect on the ecosystem of having a non-Android VM implementation.
Its very UNLIKELY to be too good to be true. The source drop Google did for the AOSP which contains the preliminary JIT is already 1.5-2.5 times faster than non-JIT Android. Google has made it VERY clear the JIT code drop was a very early version of the JIT which is lacking many internally available optimizations and stabilization improvements. Several of the JIT optimizations to which Google has made whispers, alone can make huge additional performance gains over and above what is already available in the AOSP code base.
This very likely means Google’s internal build of the JIT is already 3x+ faster than the non-JIT Dalkvik VM. As such, it would not hard to a properly funded and knowledgeable group to take the AOSP code drop and run with it, providing an equivalent performance boost. Accordingly, I would not expect the code to be available for free and as such, I would not expect to see Turbo Dalkvik available in any Android offering outside of a commercial environment – unless they are making provisions for unofficial ROM developers. And I saw no such provisions in the above announcement.
The real question is, how do these guys hope to compete when Google is likely nearing an Android release with extremely significant JIT performance boosts looming just over the horizon.
I sold my G1 for 150 bucks unlocked, Just do a warranty exchange that way you can sell it as a refurbished G1 Then call T-mobile for your unlock code to unlock the phone. that should help shave off 150 bucks off of the N1. I would like a keyboard but i am absolute in love with my N1.