Course: Android Internals Lecture 7: Android Graphics

1. Android internals
Egor Elizarov
SPbSU 2012

2. Legal info
 Android internals by Egor Elizarov is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
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– copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
– make derivative works
 Under the following conditions
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 All pictures and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Use of
these trademarks and pictures is subject to owners permissions.
 Corrections, suggestions, contributions and translations are welcome!
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3. Lecture 7
Graphic Subsystem
OpenGL HW acceleration
yegor.yelizarov(at)gmail.com
Rev: 1.1
Last update: 06/01/2012 http://vk.com/android_internals
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4. Previous time
 Linux IPC primitives
 Binder
 Application layer
 Service manager
 Middleware level
 Kernel level
 Typical Android sybsystem
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5. Graphic subsystem

Provides buffer to application for drawing

Provides interfaces for draw primitives

Controls and composes surfaces (windows)

Provides 2D & 3D primitives

Uses HW acceleration where acceptable
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6. Main players

Surface Flinger

Window Manager

Activity Manager
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7. Surface

Virtual buffer we can draw on

Can be marshalled/unmarlled in Parcel

One Activity can have more then one Surface
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8. Surface Flinger

Allocates surfaces

Composes surfaces

Can combines 2D/3D surfaces

Can use HW acceleration for surface
composition
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9. Window Manager

Dispatches input events to clients

Provides transition animation capabilities

Window Manager Policy handles common key
events in PhoneWindowManager
(Home/Back/Volume)
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10. Activity manager

Manages activity life cycle

Manages activity stacking

Dispatches intents

Spawn processes
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11. Composition example
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12. Simple view
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13. Khronos OpenGL API

Khronos Group - not for profit industry
consortium creating open standards.

OpenGL – 2D/3D graphics API

OpenGLES – 2D/3D graphics API for embedded
systems

EGL – interface between OpenGLES and native
platform window system
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14. Graphic libraries

SKIA - 2D graphic library

PixelFlinger – android software renderer

Codeflinger – simple graphic JIT

Gralloc – android graphics memory allocator

Mesa – open source OpenGL implementation
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15. Renderscript

Renderscript is new API targeted at high-
performance 3D rendering and compute
operations.

Renderscript provides:
• 3D rendering API on top of HW acceleration
• compute API (similar to CUDA)
• familiar language in C99
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16. Java/middleware interaction
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17. Double buffering
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18. Composition approach

Dirty regions – regions that should be redrawn

Use Z ordering to compose layers

Use HW composer to compose layers if possible

frameworks/base/services/surfaceflinger/Surface
Flinger.cpp
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19. SW vs HW OpenGL
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20. Middleware level
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21. 3D acceleration
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22. 2D acceleration
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23. HAL/kernel interaction
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24. Overlay vs Framebuffer surface

Two different type of surfaces in Android < 3.0

Overlay
– Picture in YUV format (Video, Camera)
– Video4Linux devices (/dev/video*)

Framebuffer surfaces
– Picture in RGB format
– Framebuffer device (/dev/fb*)

Composition is performed by HW
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25. HWComposer (Omap4)
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26. Emulator GL acceleration

In ICS Android team added GL acceleration for
Emulator

Emulator uses x86 host GL acceleration relying
on host hardware accelerated libraries
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27. Android-emulator approach
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28. Android-x86 approach
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29. Next Time

System start up

Media subsystem
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30. Useful links

http://vk.com/android_internals

http://www.slideshare.net/jserv/design-and-concepts-of-android-
graphics

http://people.debian.org.tw/~olv/surfaceflinger/surfaceflinger.pdf

http://www.cnblogs.com/xl19862005/archive/2011/11/17/22153
63.html

Http://www.khronos.org

https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDC
z8x93s
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31. Useful links (2)

http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/swpy027/swpy027.pdf

http://www.freescale.com/files/ftf_2010/Americas/FTF10_FT
F-ENT-F0824.pdf

http://elinux.org/images/0/02/Android_Platform_Optimization
s_SNPS_20111027.pdf

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2011/02/introducing-
renderscript.html

http://android-
developers.blogspot.com/2011/03/renderscript.html
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32. Thanks to

Sergey Matyukevich for review and advices
(www.linkedin.com/pub/sergey-matyukevich/31/889/769)

Nikolay F. Fominykh for review and advices

Nikita Shulga for advices and notes
(http://www.linkedin.com/pub/nikita-shulga/8/582/287)

Grigory Tolstolytkin for advices and notes
(http://www.linkedin.com/pub/grigory-
tolstolytkin/2a/b41/74)
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