“Intel has released the long awaited x86 system image of Ice Cream Sandwich for the Android SDK and emulator. This will allow the Android emulator (long plagued with slow and buggy performance) to run at native speed on computers using the Intel x86 architecture.”
It’s delivered under an evaluation license for one year.
On my lubuntu 12.04 it starts in 14 minutes if it starts (it eats a lot of i7 power)
I don’t think it uses kvm or anything else
http://www.android-dev.ro/2012/05/24/intel-just-released-its-ics-sy…
The virtualbox image it starts in less than a minute
it’s true that i don’t have opengl acceleration yet
but i can use the applications from google play : facebook …
http://www.android-dev.ro/2012/05/21/buildroid-for-virtualbox-relea…
Very slow on Mac too
Perhaps it’s only fast under Windows with the “Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager” that is installable from the Android SDK Manager?
Answer to self: No, it started in less than two minutes for the first time on my 2.5GHz Penryn running Ubuntu 12.04.
It’s a bit sluggish in operation though, no faster than the ARM image.
Does QEMU even support VT-X? Maybe it’s only fast with that (and/or latest “nested paging” cruds or whatever)??
http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2012/03/12/how-to-start-intel…
Check your configuration. You need kvm installed (obviously) and need to be part of the KVM group so that you can use KVM using a normal account.
On my laptop (with SSD) it took less than 3 minutes for my WVGA800 AVD to boot the first time. All subsequent boots into the existing AVD have been in under 10 seconds.
By careful of advice telling you to activate GPU acceleration. In Windows it is a safe bet but in Linux it will depend on a case by case basis with version of Linux and type of GPU. I would suggest getting it working without GPU acceleration and then adding it afterwards.
I would also note my tablet AVD locked up on initial load. I let it run a few minutes then closed it (it was stuck on the chrome android). When I started it up a second time though it loaded very quickly.
EDIT: Also note If you are trying to run the emulator inside a VM that will not work. KVM won’t have access to the extensions. If you are trying to run the emulator on the base iron but have Virtualbox active this also will not work. Generally you can not have 2 hypervisors connected to the VT extensions at the same time. Virtualbox won’t load while the KVM modules are loaded and vice versa.
Edited 2012-05-25 01:14 UTC
There are two things that need to be enabled in order for it to run fluidly: GPU emulation and the Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager. With neither enabled everything was as choppy or choppier than on the ARM emulator, while now with both enabled it’s almost native!
Installation instructions for enabling GPU acceleration are given in the Intel installation documentation here:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-atom-x86-image-for-a…
Note that there are a couple of caveats to enabling GPU: 1) Snapshots can no longer be used. However I guess this is an acceptable tradeoff to get significantly better performance while running. 2) More annoyingly, at least on my system (MacBook Pro with nVidia GeForce 9400M) the accelerated graphics look oddly pixelated, as if they’re running at the wrong resolution. This despite the fact that scaling to “real size” is turned off. But it’s still more usable than without acceleration…
Also note that I ran into a kind of bug where selecting “yes” from the drop-down didn’t take unless I clicked elsewhere within the dialog. So keep that in mind.
Meanwhile here are the installation instructions for HAXM:
Windows:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/installation-instructions-…
Mac:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/installation-instructions-…
Linux:
Supposedly (according to the first installation instructions link above) having KVM installed is enough.
Happy hacking!
Edited 2012-05-25 00:55 UTC
This way Intel pretty much ensures most Android apps will be developed to run on x86 first
The way from that to actually making x86 version available on market is simply passing it through system testing. Couldn’t be easier.
The same way firebug paved a way for firefox compatibility big time.
Edited 2012-05-25 11:10 UTC
I don’t think developers will develop for x86 first because it has a faster emulator. There are next to no x86 devices in the market.