Thank you a lot, mingw! Why do not google officially move to 4.6.x Linaro toolchains? I think the reason is following: (1) Mer don't have a lot of legacy baggage it's forced to carry, So Mer can move to advanced toolchains easily; (2) Android is such a huge monster that it is hard for android to move to advanced toolchains. Is the above reason right?
Thanks! BR zhanghui On 1/25/12, mingw android <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 8:48 AM, Hui Zhang <[email protected]> wrote: >> On 1/24/12, Carsten Munk <[email protected]> wrote: >>> 23. jan. 2012 13.15 skrev Hui Zhang <[email protected]>: >>>> Hi all, >>>> I am considering one important question: What is Mer's advantage >>>> over >>>> Android? In technical point of view, in marketing point of view, etc... >>>> Any >>>> are appreciated:) >>>> >>>> In 2012 Q1, an important task for me is to convince TV vendors >>>> (even >>>> chip vendors such as MSTAR and MTK) that Mer can replace Android well. >>>> If I can say something about Mer's advantage, it will do great help. >>> >>> A very big question :) On technical point of view, we have advantages >>> such >>> as: >>> >>> * Our source code is always available and accessible, so you and your >>> company can see what direction the Mer stack is going in and influence >>> it. In Android, not even partners in Open Handset Alliance (except >>> maybe the people doing a lead device) gets to see the source code >>> before release. In practice, this means that any contributions you may >>> do to Android will likely never get merged as the source code that >>> exists externally may have moved on significantly internally. >>> >> Agree. As far as openness is concerned, Mer is better than Android. >> >>> * Ability to use most open source software and libraries out there >>> with ease, as we are implementing a full set of POSIX APIs as we use >>> glibc. Android's bionic only implements a subset and doesn't implement >>> things like C++ exceptions. >> Agree. As far as compatibility to linux community is concerned, >> Mer is better than Android. >>> >>> * Mer is designed to be a core for many different kind of mobile >>> devices, while Android is built with focus of being for handsets - >>> just remember the difficulties with Honeycomb and enabling tablet >>> usage. >> I don't quite catch this. What difficulites with Honeycomb for >> tablet usage? >> And as for TV, googleTV was announced May, 2010; And In 2011, >> Serveral companies such as LG took android TV into account. >> In this point of view, what does Mer provides? >>> >>> * Mer is optimized for ARM using the Linaro GCC 4.6.2 toolchains and >>> deliverables, giving bleeding edge performance optimizations, while >>> Android is currently is on 4.4. >> I think Android can also use Linaro GCC4.6.2(or more advanced >> toolchains than 4.4). Do you think that there exist some difficulites >> for android to use Linaro GCC4.6.2 or alike? > > I can answer this as I've had a hand in the 4.6.x Linaro toolchains > used by both Mer and Android (I provide my own version of the NDK > which I think was the first NDK to move over to using Linaro's > releases). Yes, both can use Linaro 4.6.x (so long as you follow the > ABI any code generator can be used - of course with Android, you're > not using Google officially sanctioned toolchain which is still at > 4.4.3). The critical difference between Mer and Android in this regard > is that on Mer, the entire system is built with 4.6.3 whereas on > Android it's only apps built with the NDK that can take advantage of > the improvements (should the app developer know about the alternative > NDKs or care about performance or neon). The manufacturers will be > using GCC 4.4.3 for the kernel and all the standard Android bits. On a > tangential point, any Android devs using a 4.4.3 toolchain should also > avoid using any neon intrinsics as 4.4.3 neon is totally bust. > >>> >>> * Mer is flexible, you can pick and choose what components you'd like >>> to include in an image - and is meant to be ultraportable to many >>> different kind of devices. The idea is that you can with ease switch >>> hardware adaptation, or UX and spread across many kind of different >>> devices. >> Maybe android also can do this...? I don't quite understand. >>> >>> * Mer supports multiple application stories, C, C++, HTML5, QML, >>> JavaScript, etc. >> Yes, If Mer can do well in supporting HTML5 apps, that's very good:) >>> >>> * Mer can take full advantage of graphics acceleration through GPU, >>> especially with Qt5's scenegraph work. As well as multiple graphics >>> backends, X11, wayland, DirectFB, etc. >> As for multiple graphics backends, it is Mer's compability advantage; >> But how to understand "Mer can take full advantage of graphics >> acceleration through GPU"? I think android's graphics acceleration >> have already done a good job:) >>> >>> * Mer tries to make life easy for vendors wanting to make Mer products >>> - as well as having a organisation that allows people to work together >>> without the project giving preferential treatment to certain partners, >>> or abuse influence to gain preference in the OS to a certain company's >>> products, both chipset, internet services or phones. We also support >>> easily ramping up bigger and multiple teams to do parts of Mer-based >>> products. >> Yes, agree this:) >>> >>> * Mer is a cost-saver, it enables you to take full advantage of a >>> mobile Linux distribution without having to maintain a big team to >>> have it maintained for you - just share the work with others. >> Yes, it's right:) >>> >>> Some might say that it not being Android is an technical advantage - >>> but I think it's also useful to look at the disadvantages. >>> >>> Things that are good about Android but at same time bad for the >>> ecosystem in general: >>> >>> * Low footprint due to bionic libc usage, but it makes it incompatible >>> with much of current open source software >> >>> * Good hardware integration with many boards, but it makes life >>> difficult for anyone wanting to do anything besides Android based >>> products, as it's tied to the special libc >> >> Yes. Now a lot of people agree, they need something other than >> Android, they need a good replacement for Android. >>> >>> .. hope that helps a bit. The good thing about Mer is that it's a >>> quite small stack for running Linux/Qt/HTML5 on a lot of different >>> devices. And that it allows a lot of flexibility in how you make your >>> product(s) including how to easily save effort in development as you >>> can use same methods and cores even if you're making a small STB or a >>> full smartphone. >>> >> >>> BR >>> Carsten Munk >>> >>> >>> >> >> > > >
