Latest Release of Android NDK allow App Developers to Embrace the MIPS Architecture

Australian game developer Halfbrick plans to bring its popular Fruit Ninja game to MIPS. “Fruit Ninja has consistently been in the top 10 downloaded applications on Google Play, and it continues to grow in popularity. It only makes sense for us to make our flagship game accessible to the millions of consumers using MIPS-Based devices so that everyone who wants to play can do so. With Google Play and the Android NDK, supporting multiple CPU architectures is an easy and automatic process,” said Shainiel Deo, CEO, Halfbrick.

Through the Android NDK, Opera Software’s Opera Mobile browser is also now available for MIPS. “At Opera, we want our browser products to be accessible via all Android devices, including the millions of MIPS-Based mobile devices. We pride ourselves on our powerful Presto rendering technology, which provides a superior web browsing experience on any mobile device,” said Peter Wallman, VP mobile product development, Opera Software.

From Rightware, industry standard mobile benchmarking software including Basemark ES, Basemark GUI, and Basemark OS are coming to MIPS Android. “We are focused on producing the most comprehensive mobile benchmarking software, which we achieve by having a wide variety of devices in our Power Board database. We are pleased to include MIPS support, as it will contribute to the depth of our Power Board database and improve our benchmarks,” said Ville-Veikko Helppi, director of marketing, Rightware.

According to Gideon Intrater, vice president of marketing, MIPS Technologies, “We are excited to see the growing momentum of Android developers using the Android NDK to create apps that are compatible with the MIPS architecture. This is a win for developers, who can reach a wider audience, and a win for consumers, who now have access to more high-quality mobile content. We anticipate that this momentum will continue as more developers learn that simply using the NDK extends the reach of their content to millions of MIPS-Based devices already in the market.”

While most Android applications are completely portable and already available for MIPS-Based Android devices, a small percentage of applications still benefit from native code for performance reasons. Application developers who choose to use native code can generate that code for execution on MIPS-Based Android devices by using the official Android NDK available from Google at http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html.