Android 4.0 Hardware Graphics Acceleration Coming to More Platforms

The Linaro Android Platform Team has just posted a weekly update to their progress. They are going to release 11.12 very soon with hardware graphics acceleration to 2 of their members development boards: ST Ericsson Nova A9500 Snowball and Samsung Exynos 4212 Origen boards. So if you have any boards or products based on those processors you should be able to get an hardware optimized version very soon. Hardware acceleration is already available on all OMAP4 platform such as Pandaboard, since this was the default Android ICS target. They also introduced support for the ARM DS-5 debugger, an Eclipse plug-in to help developer create high performance performance  and low power native software by integrating a graphical debugger for code generated for the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) and a basic version of the ARM Streamline performance analysis tool. Here’s a list of this week achievements: Key Points for wider discussion […]

Linaro 11.11 Release with Kernel 3.1.1 and Android 4.0.1 Support

Linaro has just released version 11.11 based on Linux Kernel 3.1.1 and with support for Android ICS. The Android 4.0.1 Preview build for all low cost development boards supported by Linaro are available at http://releases.linaro.org/11.11/android/images-ics-preview/. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro’s baseline has now been upgraded to 2.3.7. The first Versatile Express Android build has been completed. Pandaboard and Vexpress has been upgraded to kernel 3.1.1. A preview of Ice Cream Sandwich is released and running on Snowball, Origen, iMX53 and on Pandaboard with Linaro kernels. A NEON-optimized libpng has been itegrated in all builds. Preliminary DS-5 support has been integrated. Preliminary WiFi support on Android Origen. Kernel config for each build is available on android-build page. USB Ethernet works on Origen. Camera recording function works on Pandaboard. USB camera can be hotplugged on Pandaboard. Developer Platform Firefox can now be cross-built using multiarch. Instructions are available […]

Linaro’s Android Platform – ELCE 2011

Zach Pfeffer, Linaro Android Platform team leader, describes Linaro’s work on the Android platform and future plans at Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2011. Abstract: Linaro uses components from the Android Open Source Project, member companies, community supported efforts and Linaro engineering teams to build integrated, easy-to-use and well tested Android platforms for upstream work, product baselines and hobby projects. The team currently has platforms for TIs PandaBoard, BeagleBoard and Beagle xM, ST Ericsson’s Snowball, Samsung’s Origen and Freescale’s iMX53. They recently released platforms with Android 2.3.4 built against GCC 4.6 and running the 3.0 Linux kernel. In this session Zach reviews what’s been done, the Linaro Android concept, how Linaro brings Android together and what their plans are. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later […]

Linaro 11.10 Release with Linux Kernel 3.1

Linaro has just released version 11.10 based on Linux Kernel 3.1. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Audio playback and recording works on LEB-panda. TJBench into all Android builds benchmarked against the original Android libjpeg implementation: TomGall/LibJpegTurbo All strict-aliasing violations in 2.3.5 have been fixed and sent to AOSP. (for build optimization) Linaro Gerrit is integrated with Android Build Service for change verification as part of Continuous Integration effort. Tip toolchain tracked and released against all targets for 11.10. iMX53 will now boot with a 3.0 or later Android Kernel. The multimedia test application has been extended to cover encoding and give better benchmark results. Linaro’s Android distribution can now base builds off a tip toolchain build. Linaro’s 11.09 toolchain has been benchmarked. USB camera (UVC) now works on linaro-android builds. Developer Platform The Linux Linaro packages are now generated and validated in a continuous integration loop. New […]

Linaro 11.09 Release with Linux Kernel 3.0.4

Linaro has just released version 11.09 based on Linux Kernel 3.0.4. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Ethernet Configuration Manager from the x86 Android project is now available in all builds. Ethernet now works on Panda, Staging Panda, Beagle, Beagle xM, Staging Snowball. QA on all boards for the 11.09 Linaro Android Builds. Daily builds of Android toolchain against gcc-linaro bzr repository is provided. Android is now compiled with GCC4.6 with -O3. Busybox is built from source in all Android builds. glmark2 added to all the official builds for Android. Powertop is now available on Android. Linaro’s 11.09 toolchain has been benchmarked. All Android builds are running with the 11.09 toolchain. The MLO that Panda and Staging Panda uses for Android uses gets built from source from the upstream git. An OMAP4460 Android build is available from android-build. Panda supports Bluetooth. Panda supports Wi-Fi. Snowball Android A-release from […]

Linaro 11.08 Release with Linux Kernel 3.0.3

Linaro has just released version 11.08 based on Linux Kernel 3.0.3 with support or TI Beagleboard, BeagleBoard-xM & Pandaboard,  ST Ericsson Snowball, Freescale i.MX53 development board and Samsung Origen board. Here are the highlights of the release: Android The Linaro 11.08 toolchain release of GCC 4.6 has compiled the Origen, BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard-xM, PandaBoard and Snowball builds, and are running Android 2.3.5 with a 3.0 Linux kernel. Together with the mainline kernel focused builds for BeagleBoard and PandaBoard and a preliminary i.MX53 build, the Android Platform Team ships 6 builds this month. A first! Android Platform code aliasing violations have been fixed allowing the use of strict-aliasing for better optimizations with gcc 4.6 based toolchains. The Android toolchain 11.08 has been released and has received numerous updates, including updated binutils and current gmp/mpfr/mpc. Benchmarks are available here. libjpeg-turbo 1.1.1 and ffmpeg with support for H.264 and WebM build are available on […]

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