Intel Corp (INTC)

[mas]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2391020/google-paves-way-for-64bit-android-l-devices-by-year-end.html

Intel has been testing 64-bit chips with Android in its labs and has seen performance benefits in graphics, data encryption and decryption, decompression and applications with large data sets. Mobile devices will be able to have more than 4GB of memory, and “fewer trips to the memory” will be required to process applications, said Doug Fisher, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Software and Services Group.

Intel is working with Google to made kernel-level changes for Android L, and will make an x86 distribution available at a later date.

Improvements in Android L also will help improve mobile device battery life, Insight 64’s Brookwood said. In addition, the notification and application launching mechanisms have been revamped in the OS.

Android L supports ARMv8, which is ARM’s 64-bit microprocessor architecture. Meanwhile, industry consortium Linaro is working on a 64-bit version of the mobile Chrome browser.

Google has said that Android applications will run two times faster on ART, the new Android 64-bit run-time environment for application execution.

Android developers won’t have to make many code changes to move to ART from the Dalvik runtime, Brockwood said.

Ultimately, Google’s move will spur a larger number of applications written with 64-bit and larger memory addressing in mind, Brookwood said.