How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400% • Hacker News Board

Re: How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400%

#11

Post by imperialWicket » Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 5:00 PM UTC

calloc wrote: post #10

imperialWicket wrote: post #4

What system takes 55 seconds to boot an Android Virtual Device? I get to the home screen with everything loaded in about 18 seconds. I'm on a fairly new system with decent processor and memory to spare, but even on my old single processor 4GB laptop I get the emulator launched in about 35 seconds.

An core i5 with 8 GB of ram and a 7200 RPM 500 GB hard drive. Actually, it is closer to 70 seconds. Then the lag while attempting to use it is unbearable, it stutters, input is completely ignored, or it crashes randomly when we try to replicate that bug on an actual device we can't.

Wow. What OS?

Re: How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400%

#12

Post by reemrevnivek » Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 5:01 PM UTC

codenerdz wrote: post #6

based on the data in the article QEmu + Android ARM runs at approximately same speed as Nexus One phone which is a good thing, right? I dont want my development emulator to run twice as fast as actual hardware, do I. The question is whether you can make the emulator run as fast as modern dual core android phones.

> I dont want my development emulator to run twice as fast as actual hardware

Why not? A lot of programmers develop native apps on high-performance workstations because it makes development faster.

Once in a while, you might hit a bug in which the execution time on a phone or in a slow emulator will cause problems. These are the exception to the rule. Use good programming practices especially with respect to multithreading and time-sensitive code and use sensible algorithms (don't under- or over-optimize), and these will be few and far between.

In general, you want fast builds, fast tests, and fast iteration. Anything that allows you to iterate faster is a good thing.

Re: How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400%

#13

Post by Roritharr » Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 5:02 PM UTC

calloc wrote: post #10

imperialWicket wrote: post #4

What system takes 55 seconds to boot an Android Virtual Device? I get to the home screen with everything loaded in about 18 seconds. I'm on a fairly new system with decent processor and memory to spare, but even on my old single processor 4GB laptop I get the emulator launched in about 35 seconds.

An core i5 with 8 GB of ram and a 7200 RPM 500 GB hard drive. Actually, it is closer to 70 seconds. Then the lag while attempting to use it is unbearable, it stutters, input is completely ignored, or it crashes randomly when we try to replicate that bug on an actual device we can't.

What kind of Android? 3.1? the 2.3 emulators are much better than the honeycomb ones.

Re: How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400%

#14

Post by ineedtosleep » Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 5:03 PM UTC

imperialWicket wrote: post #4

What system takes 55 seconds to boot an Android Virtual Device? I get to the home screen with everything loaded in about 18 seconds. I'm on a fairly new system with decent processor and memory to spare, but even on my old single processor 4GB laptop I get the emulator launched in about 35 seconds.

Older system here for comparison:

Core2 Duo, T7500 @ 2.20GHz 4GB RAM Patriot Inferno SSD

2.3 load time from start to lock screen: 65 seconds.

Re: How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400%

#15

Post by Roritharr » Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 5:04 PM UTC

This is for me the main reason google finally needs to release the Honeycomb Source, so we can have Honeycomb running on x86.

Re: How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400%

#16

Post by imperialWicket » Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 5:04 PM UTC

calloc wrote: post #10

imperialWicket wrote: post #4

What system takes 55 seconds to boot an Android Virtual Device? I get to the home screen with everything loaded in about 18 seconds. I'm on a fairly new system with decent processor and memory to spare, but even on my old single processor 4GB laptop I get the emulator launched in about 35 seconds.

An core i5 with 8 GB of ram and a 7200 RPM 500 GB hard drive. Actually, it is closer to 70 seconds. Then the lag while attempting to use it is unbearable, it stutters, input is completely ignored, or it crashes randomly when we try to replicate that bug on an actual device we can't.

For reference, I'm running Fedora 64bit on an i7 960 with 24GB RAM, and an intel 510 ssd. I haven't increased RAM at the AVD level.

Re: How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400%

#17

Post by shoota » Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 5:22 PM UTC

ketralnis wrote: post #5

shoota wrote: post #2

It's not really an emulator if you're running the x86 port of Android virtualized on x86 hardware...

Sure, but to most developers the functionality of seeing their mobile application running on their desktop machine is "emulation". And they probably don't need true emulation, they just need to test their application

That depends on whether or not there are any bugs or quirks in Android x86 that may or may not be present in Android for ARM and vice versa.

Re: How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400%

#18

Post by ConstantineXVI » Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 5:23 PM UTC

Roritharr wrote: post #15

This is for me the main reason google finally needs to release the Honeycomb Source, so we can have Honeycomb running on x86.

Technically, it's out there. The Google TV SDK (which is Honeycomb) runs on x86. Running it requires a Linux distro with KVM though. I'd bet the ICS SDK will come with some form of x86-based images as well (since they've promised x86 support for all future Android releases)

Re: How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400%

#19

Post by thevectorist » Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 5:24 PM UTC

This is another symptom of why Android development is such a pain. You have to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop just to get to the point where you can get actual work done. If a tool ends up wasting more time than it saves, it isn't a tool, it is an obstacle.

Re: How to speed up the Android Emulator by up to 400%

#20

Post by ConstantineXVI » Tue, Oct 11, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #7

jamesu wrote: post #3

Makes me wonder why the SDK doesn't use an x86 vm by default in the first place.

Wouldn't all the NDK programs at least have to be recompiled?

You'll effectively have* to post ICS; Intel is an officially supported platform now (and Google TV is currently Intel only, provided you want to be on that platform).

* Presuming you want your NDK app to run any Intel-based tablets/phones.