RISC-V assist in Android simply acquired an enormous setback

Again in early 2023, Google introduced that it was engaged on enabling assist for the RISC-V structure in Android. RISC-V is an open instruction set structure that’s grown in reputation lately since {hardware} makers don’t have to pay a licensing payment to construct RISC-V chips. Some Android units already ship with chipsets based mostly on RISC-V, although these chipsets usually run one thing aside from Android and act as a co-processor to the gadget’s predominant, usually Arm-based processor.

Late final yr, chip maker Qualcomm introduced that it was designing a wearable chipset based mostly on RISC-V and that this chipset would run on Google’s Android-based Put on OS platform. As soon as launched, these Put on OS smartwatches can be the primary industrial RISC-V {hardware} to run a Google-certified Android construct. To make that occur, although, Google should dedicate quite a lot of engineering sources to make Android — and its underlying Linux kernel fork — boot on RISC-V {hardware}. Google has already executed a lot  of the work to allow RISC-V assist in Android, although there’s fairly a bit of labor nonetheless forward.

Though Google has proven important progress in latest weeks in enhancing RISC-V assist in Android, evidently we’re nonetheless fairly a bit away from seeing RISC-V {hardware} operating licensed builds of Android. Earlier at this time, a Senior Workers Software program Engineer at Google who, based on their LinkedIn, leads the Android Methods Staff and works on Android’s Linux kernel fork, submitted a collection of patches to AOSP that “take away ACK’s assist for riscv64.” The outline of those patches states that “assist for risc64 GKI kernels is discontinued.”

ACK stands for Android Widespread Kernel and refers back to the downstream branches of the official kernel.org Linux kernels that Google maintains. The ACK is principally Linux plus some “patches of curiosity to the Android group that haven’t been merged into mainline or Lengthy Time period Supported (LTS) kernels.” There are a number of ACK branches, together with android-mainline, which is the first improvement department that’s forked into “GKI” kernel branches that correspond to a selected mixture of supported Linux kernel and Android OS model. GKI stands for Generic Kernel Picture and refers to a kernel that’s constructed from considered one of these branches. Each licensed Android gadget ships with a kernel based mostly on considered one of these GKI branches, as Google presently doesn’t certify Android units that ship with a mainline Linux kernel construct.

Since these patches take away RISC-V kernel assist, RISC-V kernel construct assist, and RISC-V emulator assist, any corporations seeking to compile a RISC-V construct of Android proper now would want to create and preserve their very own fork of Linux with the requisite ACK and RISC-V patches. Provided that Google presently solely certifies Android builds that ship with a GKI kernel constructed from an ACK department, meaning we possible gained’t see licensed builds of Android on RISC-V {hardware} anytime quickly.

Our preliminary interpretation of those patches was that Google was making ready to kill off RISC-V assist in Android since that was the obvious conclusion. Nonetheless, a spokesperson for Google instructed us this:

Android will proceed to assist RISC-V. As a result of speedy price of iteration, we’re not prepared to offer a single supported picture for all distributors. This explicit collection of patches removes RISC-V assist from the Android Generic Kernel Picture (GKI).

Whereas the corporate’s assertion doesn’t go into element in regards to the rationale behind this resolution, it’s good to get affirmation that RISC-V assist in Android isn’t being killed off fully. Nonetheless, the assertion alludes to the truth that there’s nonetheless a ton of labor that must be executed earlier than Android is prepared for RISC-V. Even as soon as it’s prepared, Google might want to redo the work so as to add RISC-V assist within the kernel anyway. On the very least, Google’s resolution possible signifies that we’d want to attend even longer than anticipated to see industrial Android units operating on a RISC-V chip.