Linaro Android Puts Stock Android To Shame on TI Pandaboard (OMAP4430)

The team at Linaro has done an amazing job at optimizing Android 4.0 for ARM and Bernhard Rosenkränzer, Android Engineer at Linaro among other things, has put all those optimizations together to showcase a demo at Linaro Connect Q2.2012 in Hong Kong with 2 pandaboards:

  • One running Stock Android 4.0.4, the one released by Google (AOSP)
  • One running Linaro Android 4.0.4

Both hardware, android version and benchmark software (oxBench) are the same, and the results are quite amazing with Android Linaro achieving about 60 fps in all 0xBenchmark tests (OpenGL Cube, OpenGL Blending, OpenGL Fog and Flying Teapot) whereas Android stock achieving 30 fps. They selected a benchmark tool that is mainly CPU bound, as they cannot optimize the GPU code since they can only access binary blobs.

Apparently, most of the improvements were possible thanks to toolchain and code optimization (to be able to build) such as using gcc 4.7 and building Android ICS without -fno-strict-aliasing and with -O3 compiler flag (first released in Linaro 12.01). So that means for this particular benchmark, they achieved to double Android performance just by “tweaking” the software. [Important update: A detailed analysis shows the benchmark is somewhat flawed, and it’s a VSync thing that makes Android appears to be twice as fast. In reality the improvements are in the 20 to 30% range, which is still very good with just software optimizations. Bero also notes that 100% speed improvement may still happen in real apps such as 3D games that may also wait for VSync to refresh the screen].

I know you don’t believe me… So have a look at the video below. 🙂 (Source: Charbax)

[Update: If you want to try it yourself and access the toolchain and source, please see Bernhard Rosenkraenzer (Bero) comment below with all the information you need.]

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30 Comments
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Sander
Sander
12 years ago

So, if this is true and Bero publicizes what he has done, can the CyanogenMod people start using the method and make the CM on my phone twice as fast?

If it is true, I guess Google will be interested too in his method and in hiring Bero?

I say “if this is true”, because “twice as fast” is quite a claim.

Bernhard Rosenkraenzer (Bero)

@ Sander You can take a look at the video, and even download the OS images we’ve used to do the benchmark. Obviously saying we’ve made it “twice as fast” is a bit of an oversimplification. This particular benchmark (the 3D benchmark included in 0xbench) runs twice as fast on this particular hardware. Other benchmarks (e.g. Sunspider) are “merely” 30% faster, some others are only slightly faster (e.g. GLMark2 – as it’s mostly GPU bound), and it would be possible to craft a benchmark showing that our build is 10 times faster (write a benchmark that uses strcpy, memset and… Read more »

GeorgeV
GeorgeV
12 years ago

@ Sander

Will you make the optimization open source, and allow Google to use it in future versions of Android?

alecs
alecs
12 years ago

Bero and his teams certainly deserve an epic thumbs up for this work! Thank you kind sirs for fighting the good fight and making our phones faster. Hope who needs to see/hear this, will.

agross
agross
12 years ago

“its -O3 the letter, not -03 the number”

Sukumar
Sukumar
12 years ago

Will this optimisation be applicable to only TI OPMAP porocessors or any ARm device, I mean Qualcomm Snapdragon S2/S3/S4?

Richie
Richie
12 years ago

@ Sander

Yes, that’s a certainty. The CM team can make the necessary improvements in their current CM9 versions even before Google decides to update it (that is, if they choose to optimize their version with this one)

Tynen
12 years ago

This is awesome! Good hack! 🙂 I can’t wait to run this on my Galaxy nexus

agross
agross
12 years ago

This was a subtle reference to some Gentoo humor from a few years ago.

Marco
Marco
12 years ago

Will this be possible on the terribly slow and buggy LG optimus 2X (dual) with tegra 2?

Eroen
12 years ago

@ cnxsoft
Liar.

Dennis Farr
Dennis Farr
12 years ago

http://thiemonagel.de/2010/01/no-strict-aliasing/ explains why you might NOT want this ‘improvement’. I admit to no real knowledge of any of this, except when I heard it went faster I automatically expected to be able to find on Google an instance of why security or quality of code would argue against this

jackie
jackie
12 years ago

@ Bernhard Rosenkraenzer (Bero)

You guys are amazing.

asfdd
12 years ago

Isn’t this like a kick in the head for aosp dev??
aosp dev should hire this team

ed
ed
12 years ago

great news. will this be possible on Galaxy S (Hummingbird, Cortex-A8)?

CSRedRat
CSRedRat
12 years ago

This great performance!

max
max
12 years ago

even after clicking “mobile off” at bottom of the page, it still do not switch to destop site.
I’m on dell streak official android 2.2.2 , tried all available browser’s.

Pls fix this issue.

Thanks & Regards

* I’ve never had this problem with charbax’s blog.

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