Intel Rolls Out "Beacon Mountain" Android Dev Platform For Atom 126
MojoKid writes "In an effort to coax developers to begin taking Atom seriously as an Android platform, Intel has just released a complete suite of tools that should help ease them into things — especially since it can be used for ARM development as well. It's called Beacon Mountain, named after the highest peak outside of Beacon, New York. As you'd expect, Beacon Mountain supports Jelly Bean (4.2) development, and with this suite, you're provided with a collection of important Intel tools: Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager, Integrated Performance Primitives, Graphics and System Performance Analyzers, Threaded Building Blocks and Software Manager. In addition, Android SDK and NDK, Eclipse and Cygwin third-party tools are included to complete the package."
It already has caught on. (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft products are...
Android and Chrome head Sundar Pichai has just revealed that Android has passed the milestone of 900 million activations, up from 400 million in 2012 and 100 million in 2011 (to put that in some perspective Windows Installs is about 1.2Billion). Its an incredibly popular OS that people want, on devices people want. The same is not true for the current version on Windows with its new tablet interface, on current PC's, Which is damaging the whole PC industry....and in context of this article why intel wants to be part of this growing wave of devices.
Windows 8 is a tablet OS (Score:1)
Apples and oranges. I wish idiots like you would stop trying to compare a telephone "OS" to an actual, real PC OS.
Then Windows 8 should have been a real operating system instead of a tablet one (on machines with lower DPI and less portable), because everyone right now is choosing Android over Windows. Its very much an Oranges vs Oranges comparison (Apple priced themselves out of every market), and its what Microsoft wanted...pushed even with its self styled Ecosystem at least they will make a Billions from the shop :).
Windows 8 the tablet OS (Score:3)
A cosmetic change to the start menu does not change that any more than the superbar in Windows 7 did.
I notice this new lie, about the start menu. Its just that a lie. The problem with Windows 8 is that it resembles an embedded OS on locked hardware not a Disk based OS on General Purpose Hardware...and compared poorly to Android and iOS. The problem is metro...the problem is Windows RT.
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Have you ever used refactoring capabilities in Eclipse? That's a basic thing I need from a programming IDE but you wouldn't find that in VStudio without plugins. Eclipse (and even NetBeans) have superior editors in my opinion. Eclipse rules for Java development and it is quite decent for C++.
I like the fact that VStudio is faster, more solid and integrated but I had a more enjoyable experience with Eclipse. I miss Eclipse now that I am forced to use VStudio for a big C++ software (because it is the choice o
Re:It already has caught on. (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because Eclipse is a terrible IDE, that doesn't mean that all IDEs are worse than Visual Studio!
On Windows, just about everyone with any common sense uses Visual Studio because it's basically the only option, and also happens to be the best development environment for C# and Windows-only C++. For Java development, there's a lot more choice, and unfortunately Eclipse has become a defacto standard in a lot of places, despite being one of the worst IDEs out there.
I use Visual Studio daily, and it's good, but it doesn't hold a candle to IntelliJ IDEA, for example. The new "refactorings" that have been added to recent versions of Visual Studio have been in IDEA for a decade. Download the trial edition, and do some serious work with it for a week or two on a large codebase. It'll blow your mind.
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Look at the big screen (Score:3)
Yeah right, and we're supposed to believe some guy named Sumdum Pikachu about this?
They put it on a big screen and everything :) http://cdn.androidcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/files/imagecache/w680h550/postimages/108579/900m.jpg [androidcentral.com]
Yum..... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yum..... (Score:5, Funny)
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Just came here to express solidarity with all those who misread this 'Bacon Mountain'. Not disappointed.
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Why not use the Android naming system.... (Score:2)
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ok, but I don't even know you... you did mention candy right?
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Maybe they didn't want to lose a kidney.
Great idea! (Score:1)
I sure would like to begin developing applications for a platform I don't have! Maybe if I create a program, a major company will create some hardware for it! (at a price I can afford, available on a network in my area)
I see nothing about licensing. I see no promise. (Score:2)
Yea it supports ARM, how is that support and how will it work out for you? Will the support it equally? What is the licensing of this confabulation? Do I have to pay anything if I make a commercial product other than the atom processor, support chips and sundry support components?
I've priced atom with all the needed support chips and compared to arm and it sucks balls on costs. I'm leery of hidden costs in this confabulation over the already sub par costs of atom.
Just curious (Score:2)
Not a problem. (Score:1)
I always enjoy a hearty B.M. every morning and evening, it's a natural healthy process, nothing to be ashamed of.
Won't help with 'to-the-metal' apps (Score:3, Interesting)
Increasingly, the best Android apps will use C++ and assembler, producing binaries that will NOT run only dodgy x86 versions of Android. There is already an issue of the best 'to-the-metal' apps on Android only running on certain ARM tablets, although this is usually down to laziness or excessive caution by the programmers. ARM provides excellent ways to ensure ARM binaries have sufficient support for the minor variations found amongst the most commonly used ARM CPU cores, the main variation being in the area of vector acceleration facilities for floating point code.
The world doesn't need x86 Android. The world doesn't want x86 Android. The world is only subject to x86 Android because Intel (illegally) PAYS third parties to build x86 Android devices. There is no sane commercial reason for any company to use an Intel chip UNLESS Intel turns up with wheel-barrows full of cash and shed loads of free low end x86 parts. Luckily, getting the devices built doesn't help Intel subvert the marketplace, since no-one chooses to buy them. Buying an Intel Android tablet would be like buying a non-cortex ARM based tablet. Sure, they'll both run 'Angry Birds', and other primitive Java only apps. However, no aware person would choose a non-cortex ARM or x86 CPU unless they wanted to be constantly checking the compatibility of Android software (and at least Android ARM binaries CAN be made compatible with non-cortex ARM v7).
We've seen this before, in the early days of Microsoft NT (now, what you call 'Windows'). Microsoft backed 3 or 4 different CPUs, and provided tools for each. In theory, an app could carry binary pay-loads for each type of CPU in the same package. In practice this NEVER happened. Either an app was a general program for a common x86 based PC, or an app was a highly specialised program for a MIPS machine or whatever. Of course, back then the (supposedly) CPU ISA independent .NET initiative did not exist.
Or again, consider the nintendo Wii U. This console was designed for brainless and cheap ports from the Xbox360. The Wii U has CPU and GPU features that can be considered as supersets of the Xbox360, but in reality things are more complex. The Wii U may have more power than the Xbox360, and 'compatible' hardware (same CPU ISA, GPU form same company), but now almost no Xbox360 developer is creating versions of their games for the Wii U. Intel's argument for Android on x86 is like Nintendo's argument for the Wii U- namely that developers from successful platforms will obviously want to port their apps/games across if the process is 'easy' enough.
In the world of software development 'easy enough' is a buzz phrase designed to fool the 'pointy-haired bosses', and it doesn't even do this. The very reason, for instance, that EA no longer codes ANY games for the Wii U is the self-same reason vanishing few good apps will appear for the x86 version of Android. Testing, supporting, and porting just won't be worth the effort. Developers who support Intel KNOW they are uselessly helping to fragment the Android market, AND support a CPU manufacturer that, if successful, will massively raise the cost of x86 Android CPU parts. Intel's mad dream is to drive ARM out of the mobile market, and then to raise the price of their mobile x86 parts back to notebook levels.
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I thought the issue was that developers had written asm to extract maximum performance from the CPU. With the inference that shoddy programmers wouldn't cleanly decouple arch specific code.
If it's arm-specific C code then intel just needs to supply the header files and reverse engineer the libraries to link against.
Of course app vendors need to see a financial benefit in porting.
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You realize you can compile the same source to get ARM or x86 binaries, with or without NEON/SSE/AVX ?
Intel CPU's are too expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry to break this to you, but the lowest end Intel CPU is powerful enough to emulate the highest end ARM CPU
Its not true ARM chipsets are faster than atom chipsets...and even if they weren't you need a 12x speed in power. The bottom line though is what people need is CPU's cheap, fast enough (for smartphone apps) vs power consumption (at least a day maybe two). The problem till now is Intel didn't have a CPU suitable for mobile...now they do (have for a while), but they are still expensive(because they insist on ludicrous margins...and its helping kill the PC industry), and in comparisons worse than the opposition.
Tegra 4 (Score:2)
I'd like some...
Here is the the tegra 4 (4+1 core) clocked at 1.9Ghz and 2.3GHz respectively...but again that is not really my point the threat is the Allwinner...or the next generation Allwinner.
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Heh...they also run WAAAAAY hotter than any ARM SOCs. That "much more powerful" comes at a price right at the moment. And the gaps shrinking rapidly. Intel can't make it lower power faster than ARM can pick up speed and keep the power low.
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Intel can't make it lower power faster than ARM can pick up speed and keep the power low.
The facts would seem to indicate the opposite. ARM will never compete in anything above the tablet level. They don't have the performance.
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Current fastest ARM (and ATOM) CPUs are performing at about the same level as the old Pentium D. Which is fast enough to run a Win 7 desktop, browser, and office. It's a far cry from a serious computer, but it's all the "desktop" power they need if built into a phone that can use a Bluetooth KB/Mouse and can display on a TV.
Facts would indicate that very few people are upgrading their PCs anymore for the need of more speed. They're just replacing them when they break. When they figure out that their phone w
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I'd like some...
Here is the the tegra 4 (4+1 core) clocked at 1.9Ghz and 2.3GHz respectively...but again that is not really my point the threat is the Allwinner...or the next generation Allwinner.
comparing 4 years old production atoms to this years barely in any products tegras isn't that fair.
though allwinner is the threat due to cost. but it's more of a threat to other arms..
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And what about the fact that Atoms are in barely any Android products?
(Typed on my Atom netbook running Linux.)
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Make that 5x (Qemu is usually 20% of native), and you'd be fairly accurate.
The "average higher-end" ARM device is 1.2-1.5 GHz (ie, I see numbers in that range quoted a lot), so let's suppose a dual-core 1.2 GHz Cortex A7.
NOTE! All of the numbers in this calculation are ones I could find in a couple minutes on Google. It's only a rough estimate.
That's around 2.5 DMIPS/MHz, which is roughly 5-10% less than the purported performance of the Pineview (I haven't found numbers more recent than that), so hypothetic
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If that were so, they'd have already handled that support in Android-X86 and it'd be a desktop solution on Linux platforms.
It is nothing of the sort- so try again. (Hint: Your assessment of being able to emulate the highest-end ARM is quite WRONG...just to start with...)
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cygwin is probably for the ndk..
though dunno why the fuck since you can get away without it nowadays.
other than that, I don't see the kit really including anything you wouldn't get by just installing the android sdk(adt, whatever) on linux and choosing the ndk etc components.
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In other words, you're single and gay.
Why is there hatred of Open Platforms? (Score:5, Insightful)
On my supposedly "archaic" x86 desktop, I download any Linux distro I feel like using and can use the exact same installer to setup a 5 year old desktop or next month's Haswell.
On my "futuristic" smartphone I have to wade through outdated information on sketchy forums to find the exact set of model-specific voodoo in order to unlock the device. Oh.. and I'm aware that not every ARM device comes locked, I was in the first-wave of Raspberry Pi purchasers. But guess what? Even with my Raspberry Pi I have to hunt down images that are tailor made just to booth with the Pi and stepping off the Raspberry Pi software reservation gets real ugly real fast.
Why is the thought of an unlocked x86 tablet that could host the exact same Linux distro that I feel comfortable with on various other computers be considered some type of evil? Why is the idea of having the ability to install a stock Android with no garbage without having to sift throught 2,000 forum posts dedicated to a specific flavor of smartphone for a specific vendor considered "anti-freedom"?
Slashdot is over-run with MS shills (Score:2)
Can't you tell?
Re:Why is there hatred of Open Platforms? (Score:4, Informative)
This has nothing to do with it being Intel vs ARM, it is that the complete definition of a PC compatible platform is standardized. Intel Atom based tablets may not necessarily follow that platform standard.
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I bet it wouldn't work on a NEC PC-Engine. Or an original Xbox.
You see, the thing is your PC is just ONE platform. Everything about the PC has been the same standard dating all the way back to the original IBM PC. RAM is always in the same location on every PC, and even today we still have the stupid 640ki-1M memory hole (for display
I read that as Bacon Mountain, and got exited. (Score:1)
But now I am disappointed in the lack of salted porky goodness.
Sucking Update Policy (Score:2)
Despite the fact that Intel has only about 3 phone models released, all on the same platform (a second one is coming), they fail to provide updates to Android 4.2 for all of them.
So this is just another shot in the foot for them. Android is a great ecosystem, but it is not for the faint of heart. If you want to compete, you have to do it properly. Half-hearted attempts will like (just like HTC).
Windows-only? (Score:2)
In an effort to coax developers to begin taking Atom seriously as an Android platform
I think that part was a joke, because TFA states it's windows only.
The [very few] windows devs I know, use MS tools like C#, etc. Are there actually any android devs that run windows out there?
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Uhh, you're years late. The Atom has had 64-bit support since 2008.
Most don't.
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x86 won the desktop wars because of Intel's incredible manufacturing processes, not because it's a beautiful design. The design is a dog.
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That may be so in your opinion, but it's still the best architecture right now.
As if you have any understanding of CPU architectures. I know your type, you're the fanboy who will say anything to defend your object of adulation. More interested in fighting than learning.
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Intel has been able to keep up with modern technology by clever engineering and piling on bandaids over the chip's eccentricity's, but it's still a pile of baindaids. That's why Intel wanted to dump it and start fresh.
By bandaids what do you mean exactly? We all know that support for 16-bit mode and memory segmentation costs silicon, but at most that requires the same number of transistors as the first 8088. If you mean because its not RISC then sorry your favorite design philosophy didn't win the performance war, but it was for the same reason that the opposing design philosophy didn't: Hybrid of CISC and RISC is better than either, but can only be implemented with a design philosophy that permits a large instruction s
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As far as register counts, there are diminishing returns to adding more registers. In practice any out-of-order CPU (ie: performance) already has a pool of registers greater than the number of ones indicated by the instruction set. This pool is used in a register renaming scheme that allows the CPU to manage a long out-of-order pipeline efficiently.
Do you really think this makes up for not being able to choose registers at compile time?
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Do you really think this makes up for not being able to choose registers at compile time?
Uh, who said anything about not choosing registers?
You have imagined an extreme that does not exist.
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Uhh, you're years late. The Atom has had 64-bit support since 2008.
Most don't.
Intel will "solve" this problem by simply abandoning the old processors. They did it to the first atoms already; preview releases of new Linux distributions that Intel has contributed code to (e.g. Tizen) don't support them already.
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Register renaming doesn't make up for a lack of registers because it's harder for a compiler (or human) to optimize for it.
Register renaming and the OOE that it enables greatly widens the target that compilers needs to hit. The point of register renaming is that you still win even when the compiler is retarded about register use. Intels latest chips are commonly pulling 2.5+ instructions per clock cycle even when using compilers written in the 1990's, written before there was even such a thing as register renaming.
Intel designs processors that execute existing code efficiently. Thats the metric in use by their engineering te
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Intels latest chips are commonly pulling 2.5+ instructions per clock cycle even when using compilers written in the 1990's, written before there was even such a thing as register renaming.
ARM cores are dual-issue now, so that's just not that exciting any more.
In no way, shape, or form does register renaming have either a negative impact on cpu performance or on compiler optimization opportunities. Its the exact opposite.
Straw man, or at best, you failed to understand the argument. The argument is not that register renaming has a negative impact on cpu performance, the argument is that having more GPRs provides superior performance to register renaming. This is a proven fact; just recompiling some code for x86_64 provides a 15% performance increase for this reason alone (on the same processor.)
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This is a proven fact; just recompiling some code for x86_64 provides a 15% performance increase for this reason alone (on the same processor.)
Note to self:
A CPU that has completely unused silicon in one mode performs better when all of its silicon is being used by the other mode.
You claim that I failed to understand the argument, but its you that are failing to make an argument that doesnt have a hole big enough to drive a clue truck through.
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A CPU that has completely unused silicon in one mode performs better when all of its silicon is being used by the other mode.
We're talking about GPRs here, in 32 bit mode it uses less of them. There are other differences, but it's still using all the functional units in 32 bit mode, which makes your argument laughable at best.
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> That's why they added more with x86-64.
That's why _AMD_ added more with x86-64.
Intel was still trying to get Itanium working when AMD trumped them by bring out x86-64. Intel had to copy that to keep relevant. The initial Intel x86-64 CPUs couldn't even run Windows-64, an AMD chip was required until Intel fixed theirs.
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Youre welcome to make your own architecture. We await eagerly the amazing innovations you will surely be bringing to the table.
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I dont think its a fallacy to point out that NOONE has managed to make faster processors than x86-64 arch ones in years despite claims that there are superior processor arches. Appeal to authority is not necessarily a fallacy if all of the biggest authorities in the field agree.
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First, the "fallacy" referred to was along the lines of "let's see you do better," which is certainly not the same as "nobody has done better."
Second, best != fastest clock. MIPS and ARM can be done in a fraction of the silicon, hav