Myriad Group Interview, the company behind Dalvik Turbo

Myriad Group are the company behind the Android performance boosting VM Dalvik Turbo, and the recently announced tool J2Android, which converts Java MIDlets to run on Android devices. They can also boast that they created the best selling mobile browser of all time in Myriad Browser, which has so far shipped on over 2 billion phones.  Myriad Group are Europe’s biggest mobile software company, employing over 700 engineers worldwide.  The organisation have had a hand in some of the most successful Android devices to date and will undoubtedly have a major part to play in Android’s future going forward.  We were delighted to be given the opportunity to put a few questions to them on their thoughts on Android, and what we can expect from Dalvik Turbo and J2Android.

Myriad Group are one of the founding members of the Open Handset Alliance, and had a key role to play in the creation of the first Android handset, the G1, as well as in the HTC Hero. Myriad Group are unquestionably one of the leading contributors to the Android platform so far, are you surprised at how quickly Android has grown?

There are now 24 different Android devices available from 61 operators in 49 countries, and last month Eric Schmidt stated that Android is selling 60,000 handsets everyday. It’s important to keep in mind that Android holds slightly less than 10% global market share, so there’s still a way to go before achieving global domination. That said, it’s not surprising that Android has been quickly embraced as there has been clear demand by the industry and consumers for an alternative to what has existed in the market. Free and open source is an attractive element and Android will continue to benefit from introducing this model to mobile.

Dalvik Turbo was demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to much praise from the experts. How did the idea for optimizing the virtual machine come about, was it borne of frustration at limitations in the original Dalvik or was it simply that it was the next obvious step in the Android platform’s evolution?

We see Dalvik Turbo as a natural next step for OEMs, operators and developers. They’ve demanded, and we’re now able to supply through Dalvik Turbo, an increase in application execution speed and the opportunity for OEMs and operators to bring smoother delivery and more complex applications to Android phones. With Myriad’s deep heritage in dynamic adaptive compilation technology, we were able to create Dalvik Turbo as a drop-in alternative for the original VM, offering a seamless replacement that integrates directly into Android. Additionally, we’re now able to equip developers with the tools to take full advantage of Android by enabling them to implement advanced graphics and complex models into their games while retaining full compatibility with existing software.

How soon is it likely to be before we see devices running Dalvik Turbo? Will it be made available to users of existing Android devices, or will it be restricted to the next generation of phones?

Dalvik Turbo will be available for the next generation of phones and Myriad is expecting shipments beginning as early as this summer.

What’s the expected overall performance gain with Dalvik Turbo? What about for math intensive computations? Performance is hugely important to developers, especially game developers, what advantages does Dalvik Turbo offer to them?

Dalvik Turbo provides the maximum performance gain in applications where most of the code is written in Java. In the case of math intensive computations, this is exactly the type of use cases where Dalvik Turbo excels as the most “frequent” execution path will be compiled. Gains in such applications can be up to five times faster.

Perhaps most importantly, Dalvik Turbo enables developers to develop in Java without having to go native because of the original Dalvik’s performance limitations. This is a major advantage for developers and specifically for game developers who can reuse code and benefit from the productivity advantages that a managed language such as Java delivers.

You recently announced the launch of J2Android, allowing conversion of Java MIDlets to Android apps. A lot of Android developers already code in Java and then compile the bytecode to run in Dalvik themselves. What are the main advantages to using J2Android to convert the Java code?

As J2Android’s target market is really comprised of phone manufacturers, operators and mobile application stores at this point, we’re providing them the ability to more rapidly populate their Android storefronts with premium applications from launch, without the need for porting or middleware. They can either choose to spend time and money hiring a team of coders, sourcing necessary hardware and middleware and tracking down the original source code for each application – or they can simplify the entire process by utilizing a trouble-free and cost-effective solution like J2Android.Android developers can move their Java code across to

Android and rewrite their software to connect to the Android APIs. However, J2Android does not require any source code modifications and works at binary level with a very quick conversion process (seconds). This allows large collections of MIDlets to be available on Android without any need to go back to source code level.

Who do you see as being the main users of J2Android; mobile network carriers or individual developers?

At this point in time, we are focusing our efforts on offering J2Android to phone manufacturers, operators and mobile application stores.

Are you able to give us an insight in to what we can expect from Myriad Group for Android next?

We are proud of what has been achieved with Dalvik Turbo and at the same time are working on advancements in the compiler and the virtual machine arenas. We continue to work on innovative solutions for Android and across our whole portfolio, so stay tuned.

Thanks to the folks at Myriad Group for taking the time to answer our questions.

Source: thisandroidlife.com