At the recent RISC-V Summit event, Google officials announced plans to implement official support for the RISC-V architecture on the Android platform. Android CTO Lars Bergstrom said it will become RISC-V “First Level Platform” in Android, putting the architecture on par with Arm.
Image source: Getty Images
This announcement can be seen as a significant change in Google’s position regarding RISC-V’s place in the Android ecosystem. A few months ago, Bergstrom said that Android builds needed to be optimized for RISC-V “a lot of work”Add that the developers have outlined “road map”which will take several years to complete. Despite this, the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) repository, which is used to develop the source codes of the Android platform, has been releasing official patches intended to support devices with RISC-V processors since last September.
Image source: arstechnica.com
Although it will still be a few years before Android is fully optimized for devices with processors based on the RISC-V architecture, enthusiasts can already get access to the build system, which they use to evaluate the development of the Android “riscv64” branch can. Emulator support will be available early this year, and Android RunTime (ART) support for the RISC-V architecture will arrive in Q1 2023, according to the source.
Add Comment