Is Android OS only for ARM processors?

Question

If not, can Android APK files run either on ARM processors or on processors without ARM?

Sorry for the bad english.

Answer 1

Android also runs on a different processor. For example, Intel Atom .

If your application uses only Java, it does not matter. It can work on any processor, and you don't care. You do not need to program specifically for each processor when working with Java.

If your application uses native code ( NDK ), you will have to prepare the APK to run on any CPU that you want to support. Instructions such as these explain how to do this.

If you're not sure if you need NDK or not, then you probably won't. NDK is needed in very specific cases, such as high performance games. If you just create a regular application, you are likely to use only Java.

Regarding the APK problem - if you need to support multiple architectures, you can do this using either one APK or multiple APKs. For more information read this .

Answer 2

Support for Android, ARM, MIPS, Power Architecture, x86 prosessors..X86 cpu are similar to Intel Atom and other processors, which are single-core, like Pentium M. Android requires 480MHZ Cpu to work fine, something below will be slow. and, as talkol said, if you program in java (most likely), the architecture doesn't matter.

Answer 3

In fact, to run the APK, they will need to be installed on the Android OS. And the Android OS must support an appropriate architecture.

Now I’m not sure if this is an exception, and I don’t know if the software uses any tricks to function as an Android emulator. But BlueStacks allows you to install and run Android applications on Windows, Mac and Chrome OS platforms ( only ARM and x86 >). Or it may just be a fact that the Android OS is now running / supported by 3 other platforms besides the ARM platform. Namely:

• MIPS
• x86 : Not sure if this is a relevant link
• i.mx

In addition, in AVD, you will see that you have the opportunity to choose between the architecture of ARM, Intel x86 and MIPS when creating a new / or editing an existing virtual device (provided that you installed it from the SDK manager).

So, the bottom line: if the architecture is capable of running the Android OS, your application can also run on it.

Answer 4

Android, an open source project, is used for almost any processor in the wild.

APK files can contain a wide array of types. Most of them will allow the APK to run on any processor, but some types are like shared libraries, etc. They can be included and can inhibit compatibility between platforms.

Please refer to the wikipedia article for an overview of the contents of the APK file.