Thread: The Intel phone that could have run Meego
View Single Post
Fuzzillogic is offline Fuzzillogic
2012-04-26 , 16:46
Posts: 479 | Thanked: 1,284 times | Joined on Jan 2012 @ Enschede, The Netherlands
#13
Originally Posted by don_falcone View Post
AIUI they would use static translation in the cloud during package upload, not during runtime / on-device:

"ARM native NDK apps on the other hand are translated by Intel in the cloud, validated against Intel's Android x86 emulator and pushed to the Play Store. The point is the bulk of binary translation happens away the device itself and running on much faster Xeons in the cloud. As binary translation requires more cycles than natively running the code, which in turn consumes additional power, this was the only route for Intel to ensure that Atom would remain power efficient (and high performance) even on non-native NDK apps."
Fine, as long as it can be done stand-alone on the device itself as well. But given the trend to gain total control over the ecosystem and all the cloud-blabla I guess people simply can't side-load ARM-based APK's, and thus are required to have a Google account to install apps.

Also, I wonder what is to be gained. Java is JIT-compiling on-demand and on-device since ages, even when PC's weren't as powerful as these Intel-devices. I guess that they are more afraid the technology gets "out in the public" through reverse engineering.

Leaves me wondering on how open an Intel-powered MeeGo device would have been. Call me pessimist, but just like Apple and now Nokia/Microsoft these actions seems to be locking down the platform and gaining control. And they get away with it, because the general population doesn't know, doesn't understand, doesn't care, but still is very much willing to pay for it. Sad.