Of course MIPS Technologies wants to oust its old rival ARM from total dominance on the smartphone, and what better way to do that than to run Android Apps faster than ARM.
That appears to be the logic behind the MIPS announcement that it has implemented an alternative Java run time environment in the form of the Dalvik Turbo virtual machine, an alterative to the Google Dalvik software, which is said to run applications five times faster than the Google implementation.
The original claims from French/Swiss company Myriad Group which wrote it, was that it is three times faster, but it has just upgraded the software and done a version for MIPs, and reckons that this version has even more advantages than the Google Android VM. This runs applications which have been converted into a compact Dalvik Executable (.dex) format suitable for systems that are constrained in terms of memory and processor speed. Myriad says that versions of its software are already installed on over 2 billion phones. Myriad’s Dalvik Turbo VM is already operational on all current versions of Android up to 2.2 (Froyo).
This is the secret weapon that MIPS will use to get more licensees to its Core, with the promise that the SoCs created will be faster, support more complex applications and offer richer game graphics when running Android. There should also be considerable battery improvements the two companies said.
‘We have a long-standing relationship with MIPS Technologies and are pleased to continue our successful track record with this latest milestone,’ said Malcolm Dawe, chief product officer, Myriad Group. ‘With Myriad’s heritage in virtual machines and Android platform expertise combined with MIPS Technologies’ Android on MIPS initiative, we are bringing high-performance Android applications to mobile handsets and other consumer electronic devices, leading to a greatly enhanced user experience.’
Myriad is a founder member of the Open handset Alliance and claims to have contributed significantly to the Android platform and says it has contributed to a number of Android applications including a WAP browser, MMS messaging, SyncML client, a DRM module and an IMPS client and a compatibility Test Suite.
An evaluation version of the optimized VM is available free-of-charge through the Android on MIPS community at www.mipsandroid.org as of August 1, 2010.