AMD or Intel could beat others to the punch and make a mobile SoC with RISC-V applications cores. They'd be the first to face the pain of porting Dalvik and NDK apps, but in the end they'd be way out ahead of the competition.
I've just been assuming Google would bring Dalvik to RISC-V. They're already porting Go and some other things. If they were to release Android for RISC-V it could be devastating to ARM. Not that I think Google cares about ARM, they've been enjoying competition among SoC designers due to ARMs reasonable licensing (that's a relative term of course).
I meant the more abstract pain of introducing the new ISA and probably taking blame for problems with functionality and performance. Yes, Google would probably be the ones executing this task.
Re:Intel and the Danger of Integration
by imtringued on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @05:25AM
(#17399058)
Does Google force developers to upload an IR or bytecode for the NDK so that they can just recompile for a new architecture?
AMD should be in a better position to try because they were already planning to put ARM cores in their SoCs a few years ago. While that effort was dropped, I assume they still have a bunch of people around that know what the issues are and are ready to tackle them. Problem is ARM doesn't really have enough of those people to divert to alternatives.