State of GPU acceleration on Android.

[rpg.314]

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1537446&postcount=33

It is points like these which make me wonder what is the present state of GPU acceleration in Android.

Is the UI gpu accelerated? Are the apps gpu accelerated?

 

[Pressure]

Some of what we are seeing rearing its head here is most likely software optimization.

I have no doubt that iOS is more polished when it comes to transitions and effects as of now but future versions of Android should close the gap and somewhat give the same experience.

 

[Mize]

Some of what we are seeing rearing its head here is most likely software optimization.

I have no doubt that iOS is more polished when it comes to transitions and effects as of now but future versions of Android should close the gap and somewhat give the same experience.

This is where the fragmentation thing gets ugly...supporting X hardware platforms vs. 1.

 

[Laurent06]

It is points like these which make me wonder what is the present state of GPU acceleration in Android.

Is the UI gpu accelerated? Are the apps gpu accelerated?

I think it's this. Still an open issue it seems

EDIT : Hmm in fact it's closed...

 

[rpg.314]

Let us for the moment assume that competition kicks the level of gpu hw upwards across the board. Leaving the decision in dev hands means devs/old apps will still be using a lot of sw rendering. This is simply ridiculous.

Android should be exposing only one way to render stuff and let OEM decide which path, sw or hw, to use, depending upon SoC. Or Google should grow some balls and put a minimum hw standard, increasing it over time.

The way I see it, Google has been doing a poor job of shepherding the platform, it's marketshare aside.

 

[Arun]

Honeycomb/3.0 adds GPU Acceleration, used by default for all Google stock apps but must be enabled manually by devs for 3rd Party ones: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/03/android-30-hardware-acceleration.html

I'm a bit surprised they haven't made a bigger deal of it TBH. Also in the browser's case there is still no tiling/precaching ala Apple; Qualcomm added that to their version of Android on 2.3 and told me they'd submit it to the main tree for Google to approve, but it's not clear to me how that code will work together with Google's GPU acceleration so it remains to be seen whether it will even get approved at all (for now).

As for metafor's original point, that is probably because of blocking I/O rather than rendering itself.

 

[metafor]

Honeycomb/3.0 adds GPU Acceleration, used by default for all Google stock apps but must be enabled manually by devs for 3rd Party ones: http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/03/android-30-hardware-acceleration.html

I'm a bit surprised they haven't made a bigger deal of it TBH. Also in the browser's case there is still no tiling/precaching ala Apple; Qualcomm added that to their version of Android on 2.3 and told me they'd submit it to the main tree for Google to approve, but it's not clear to me how that code will work together with Google's GPU acceleration so it remains to be seen whether it will even get approved at all (for now).

As for metafor's original point, that is probably because of blocking I/O rather than rendering itself.

See, I don't think that it is. This was a consistent lag; not something you'd see in the past where it'd work fluidly after the initial fetch. No matter how many times I scrolled the youtube or webpage widget stack, it could not fluidly transition. I think this may just be a case of that particular function not using the GPU API call.

 

[Arun]

Ah, you're talking about the Youtube widget? Hmm, haven't tried it myself. What you'd describe could be because of very inefficient code with no GPU acceleration, but couldn't it also be because there's literally *no* caching and it does a blocking network call every single time? I guess one way to test it would be to disable the internet connection after scrolling a lot (to make sure the cache is as full as it can be). Alternatively they could be caching to NAND instead of DRAM, but that would be weird... Anyway, no matter the cause (and it could be what you say), I agree it's a pretty typical example of the lack of polish on Android versus iOS.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

UI GPU acceleration is in the spec list for 3.0, and some news are claiming that 2.4 will be basically 2.3 with UI GPU acceleration.


But apparently, like every other "feature" in android updates, it seems to be optional.
So as there are many 2.2 devices without USB tethering, wifi hotspot, JIT enabled and Flash 10.1 (Optimus One has none of those, i.e.), there will probably be lazy manufacturers launching 3.0 devices without UI acceleration.

I don't know if that's the case with Xoom, but I wouldn't be surprised if Motorola is too busy spending their resources in "cool" commercials and agressive marketing rather than trying to make the device's UX competitive to the iPad.

 

[metafor]

UI GPU acceleration is in the spec list for 3.0, and some news are claiming that 2.4 will be basically 2.3 with UI GPU acceleration.


But apparently, like every other "feature" in android updates, it seems to be optional.
So as there are many 2.2 devices without USB tethering, wifi hotspot, JIT enabled and Flash 10.1 (Optimus One has none of those, i.e.), there will probably be lazy manufacturers launching 3.0 devices without UI acceleration.

I don't know if that's the case with Xoom, but I wouldn't be surprised if Motorola is too busy spending their resources in "cool" commercials and agressive marketing rather than trying to make the device's UX competitive to the iPad.

From what I could tell, the Xoom is pretty much whatever stock code Google had put out. Most of the overall UI, including the browser and the 3D wall of youtube videos, were incredibly fluid and responsive. It's just the inconsistency that makes it feel awkward. The youtube wall, which seems much more graphically intensive than the widget stack, responds much more fluidly to user input.

Likewise notifications along with its animation popped up flawlessly, but the task switching window seemed to chug a bit. These are tiny things of course, but it's amazing how much they make the OS experience seem unfinished.

 

[wco81]

They won't do minimum HW requirements because a lot of their volume is from lower-cost models now sold in Europe and Asia. Google's business model is about ad impressions, not margin or profit per unit of hardware sold.

Plus to some extent, the platform has gotten beyond their control. In the US, some Android phones come with crapware which can't be easily uninstalled. Some even have Bing as the default search engine!

 

[Mize]

They won't do minimum HW requirements because a lot of their volume is from lower-cost models now sold in Europe and Asia. Google's business model is about ad impressions, not margin or profit per unit of hardware sold.

Plus to some extent, the platform has gotten beyond their control. In the US, some Android phones come with crapware which can't be easily uninstalled. Some even have Bing as the default search engine!

Meh. Android devices are meant to be rooted and made nice.

 

[swaaye]

Check out the new Opera browser. It is exceptionally smooth. Too bad it's not more configurable. I wonder how they accomplished this.