Swiss firm claims huge boost in Android app performance, battery life with new virtual machine
By Chris Ziegler 
posted February 9th 2010 6:35AM
posted February 9th 2010 6:35AM
At the core of Anrdoid lies a little bundle of code known as the Dalvik virtual machine, a runtime environment for Java apps that's specifically optimized for hardware with limited memory and processor power -- you know, the kind of situation you find in your average smartphone. The relative success of the Android Market suggests that Dalvik's getting the job done on some level (as long as you're not looking for a texture-intense FPS), but the fact that Google bothered to create a separate native development kit to speed up intensive operations certainly serves as a damning counterpoint. Enter Swiss firm Myriad -- a founding and code-contributing member of the OHA, coincidentally -- which is touting this week that it's crafted a much higher-performance replacement for Dalvik, appropriately known as "Dalvik Turbo." Just how much higher-performance are we talking? Myriad claims apps run in Dalvik Turbo "up to three times" faster, all while reducing battery drain and giving devs the power they need to create graphically intense games. Even better, it apparently maintains complete compatibility with existing Android apps and is available for all the key mobile platforms -- ARM, Atom, and MIPS included -- and is virtually guaranteed to make you sob uncontrollably to learn that your Android 1.5, 1.6, 2.0, or 2.1-based device isn't using it. It'll be on display at MWC next week, so we're looking forward to finally seeing Gang Wars humming along at 60fps on a G1.
But will it have a shiny red turbo button?
@Eternity LOL. That reminded me of the old i286 days where computers had an almost pointless Turbo button that you only switched off by accident.
It wasn't pointless if you had some old games with animations timed against CPU cycles instead of milliseconds on the clock. They ran unplayably fast if you didn't turn the turbo off.
@Eternity No, just a lime green one. It's Android remember.
Hopefully they just used the native TK on the graphics, SD card access, and sorting -- cause Android needs more HP in those depts.
@Eternity
hahah . . . everyone just assumed that it was meant to speed up your computer like something from the fast and the furious. I remember feeling very cheated when I realized that its only use was to let me play that game from Sierra at normal FPS.
@SimplyAdam Ah those were the days...
@recharged95 once it supports actually installing things on the SD card they will improve it
@bolezhinkov Hey some netbooks had turbo modes, why can't phones?
lol... 1FPS Crysis!
@Techie
Just like a laptop.
@Techie You realize some people dream of such a Crysis frame rate on their laptops! I nearly cried when I maxed out the settings on my 2007 MBP and it hit about one (incorrectly rendered) frame every five of six seconds! I've vowed not to buy another laptop until 2014 just so I can be *absolutely* sure that yes, it will, indeed, play Crysis.
@richardeworrall
today on "reality check"
@bolezhinkov 8600M GT w/ 256MB of RAM trying to render the DX10 version @ 1440x900 Very High with 32x antialiasing and full anisotropic filtering = abject failure!
I will give them a visit.... (let´s see if they are willing to give me a beta ;-)
Sounds like snake oil for sucker. :)
@Zodiac No it doesn't. Google's claim that Dalvik is optimised for slow, low-memory devices is pretty bogus. Ok, the low-memory thing may be true, but in now way is it optimised for slow devices - if anything it is the opposite! At the moment it doesn't even include a JIT compiler! (Although apparently they are *finally* working on it.) The garbage collector is also the most basic design possible (mark & sweep).
It is completely reasonable that Myriad have implemented a JIT compiler and decent garbage collector that results in 'up to' a 3x speed increase.
@Timmmmmm
Yep, garbage collection and performance under the Dalvik VM can be summed up with one word: horrible.
The sad and really annoying part of the story is, when a lot of people asked the main developer at the last Google IO if and when we will see improvements in this area he basically sad "Um, I don't really believe in JIT and ... um ... maybe someday we will get to that".
I guess if it runs a telephone book app, it's fast enough.
Also you can always "optimize" by upping the GHz.
misspelled "Android" at the start if the article...just giving a heads up. :)
of* haha
If it can run flash, I'm sold
myriad is a Swiss/French company, not German...
Since when is Switzerland a part of Germany?
Damnit, now I want a Droid even more.
I hope this is for reals. Would love to see how Dalvik Turbo performs on my minty fresh Nexus One.. Its slick as it is with just stock Android 2.1 - Myriad's Dalvik Turbo seems like a dream (no pun intended) come true.
More proof that companies should be optimizing their SOFTWARE instead is just throwing more Hz and RAM at a problem.
@Hazdaz
QFT
Just trying to imagine that my old Samsung Galaxy could have gotten the 3x bump, i might of stayed a little longer with it. The N1 wouldn't have been as necessary for me if that would have been the case. Its compatible with the current framework so it could be implemented into our apps fairly quickly too. I'm sure Google is on it
wow this would remove all lag from htc hero for sure!
@elmo61 Root your phone and put a custom rom like Fresh, Gumbo, or MoDaCo, you will see quite a speedup.
would love to see it implemented in a cyanogen mod!!!
By the time you get your software optimized, the platform you optimized it for is outdated.
This is why so much crapware exists for our mobiles, it's "Get it out the door fast before a new phone is released, fsck the optimization....fsck the bug fixes!".
Up to three times faster? In my own simple tests of a year ago I found that Java ME on comparable Nokia phones with a JIT compiler ran some 5 to 8 times faster for CPU-intensive tasks than the equivalent Android program under the Dalvik interpreter. Still, it will be interesting to see where this is going, and the associated gains in battery life are more than welcome.
Aren't modern processors used in Android devices more than fast enough to run a full JVM? I realise Hotspot (which finally, as of java 6 update whatever, is blazing fast - approximately equal to native code) is not available on ARM, but using a limited JVM seems a bit of a random design decision.
Kind of a good move by Myriad. They have two directions they can go with this. 1) Market to handset vendors or 2) Market to Google for acquisition. I'm guessing they're really crossing their fingers on #2.
Myriad isnt German, its Swiss...(Switzerland is not Germany ;P)
So the question is, how long before this new VM is in CyanogenMod? :-)
@Jimi
thas what i want. 'O_o,
Would love to see this implemented in the Sholes Rom or Bugless Beast for the Droid.
@Bobbo
Would love to know who punched that girl's face and made her lips so fat.
I want to hear Google talk about this. Some of you seem to be clued up on such coding and seem to feel google dont care. Getting such a speed boost/battery improvement across all their handsets would be amazing. Please do this (or something similar) Google :)
Trust the Swiss to make something faster and more efficient.