The performance of a
user interface is of paramount importance - we ourselves have often been
annoyed with dropped frames on even the fastest dual-core processors.
Many have pointed out that on Android this could easily be solved with full hardware graphics
acceleration.
But is that really so? Dianne Hackborn working as an Android engineer
over at Google apparently had enough reading misunderstandings about the
way Android treats graphics and posted a very interesting and
informative note on Google+.
First, she notes, Android has always used some form of hardware acceleration.
But while the earlier versions supported it only partially, Android 3.0
Honeycomb for tablets introduced full hardware graphics acceleration.
This allows to leverage the GPU’s resources actively instead of relying
on software only. Previously, many of the animations would rely on the
processor, so that it took virtually all of the load which in turn
compromised other operations where processing power is needed.
Now, in Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich the hardware acceleration is “not any more full”
than in Honeycomb. It does changes however some nuances, so that in ICS
hardware acceleration is enabled by default. Thus, all drawings will be
made using the GPU.
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