MIPS Technologies has been dabbling in the Android (News – Alert) smartphone market quite a bit lately with its reduced instruction set architecture. Right now, ARM chips are still responsible for powering most Android devices – and are doing a great job at it. But considering the potential for a more powerful mobile processor that simplifies commands and reduces system load, a great deal of developers are optimizing their apps for MIPS chips through the Android NDK.
The Android NDK is a toolkit which allows developers to code in native languages (e.g. C/C++) to sometimes boost performance, and though this method isn’t always the most effective choice in coding for Android, it sure helps with MIPS technology.
“At Opera, we want our browser products to be accessible via all Android devices, including the millions of MIPS-Based mobile devices,” said VP of mobile product management at Opera Software (News – Alert). “We pride ourselves on our powerful Presto rendering technology, which provides a superior web browsing experience on any mobile device,” he added.
Halfbrick, developers of the popular Fruit Ninja game, are also embracing the growing MIPS architecture. “It only makes sense for us to make our flagship game accessible to the millions of consumers using MIPS-based devices so that everyone who wants to play can do so,” said CEO at Halfbrick, Shainiel Deo.
Probably one of the biggest drawbacks of Android shipping on so many devices is that of compatibility. A lot of phones and tablets have the same processors and various hardwares, but an app which is compatible with device A might not be completely stable or even available on device B due to slight differences in how the chip handles operations.
With MIPS on the rise in a world of ARM (News
– Alert)-powered mobile devices, there are sure to be a handful of bugs, as developers work on rolling out compatible versions of current apps. But as these technologies progress and become more widely embraced by those developers, it is likely that we’ll start to see a lot more MIPS-powered devices performing just as well (if not better) than devices running on ARM architecture.
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Edited by
Brooke Neuman