It'll be exciting to see what the new system entails. Unfortunately, I fear it means a lot more proprietary vendor lock in, than Android already provides.
Good, Android could definitely stand to be scrapped and remade from the ground up.
The best thing is the Android Runtime can be ported to other platforms, so if Google does make the jump, the Android Runtime can be ported to be used as a compatibility layer for legacy apps.
I wonder how different from linux the kernel is. They really went out of their way to use cutting edge technologies.
[QUOTE=aurum481;52201994]I wonder how different from linux the kernel is. They really went out of their way to use cutting edge technologies.[/QUOTE]
It's a microkernel so it'd probably be more similar to Minix than Linux.
I hope it's possible to pick what colors you want your windows to open as, because I'm not looking all the orange despite definitely liking the cleanness of the UI.
[QUOTE=Dr. Evilcop;52202025]It's a microkernel so it'd probably be more similar to Minix than Linux.[/QUOTE]
So even more overhead on already hardware/battery constrained systems? Horraaaayyy
[QUOTE=JohnnyOnFlame;52205540]So even more overhead on already hardware/battery constrained systems? Horraaaayyy[/QUOTE]
I don't see literally any reason why a microkernel would have more overhead than a giant one, if anything it should be the other way around
[QUOTE=Elspin;52206118]I don't see literally any reason why a microkernel would have more overhead than a giant one, if anything it should be the other way around[/QUOTE]
Communication barriers are the main thing that comes to my mind, there's probably other context switching/argument passing related costs too.
[QUOTE=JohnnyOnFlame;52207671]Communication barriers are the main thing that comes to my mind, there's probably other context switching/argument passing related costs too.[/QUOTE]
Inter-process communication is indeed one such barrier. Instead of having the entire kernel in single address space, microkernel is comprised of numerous processes. That means that performing a kernel operation (eg. file system operation) would require more context switches and message passing between different processes, adding more overhead than doing the same operation on a monolithic kernel. As far as I know, in monolithic kernel the only notable performance hit comes from switching from user to kernel space or vice versa.
That said, the entire kernel being in address space means that a single malfunctioning part of the kernel can bring the entire system down. In a microkernel it would mean only the offending process crashes, allowing the system to keep running if the crashed process isn't a critical one. So it's essentially a trade-off of reliability and security versus performance, although Linux is reliable as is (your mileage may vary depending on what you consider reliable enough).
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