What is the Android Native Development Kit (NDK)?

AndroidAndroid Ndk

Android Problem Overview


What is the Android NDK (native development kit) ? How can one use it? Why should one use it?

Android Solutions


Solution 1 - Android

The NDK (Native Development Kit) is a tool that allows you to program in C/C++ for Android devices. It's intended to integrate with the SDK (it's described as a "companion tool") and used only for performance-critical portions of a project. See here for more information.

Solution 2 - Android

NDK may improve application performance. This is usually true for many processor-bound applications. Many multimedia applications and video games use native code for processor-intensive tasks. The performance improvements can come from three sources. Firstly, the native code is compiled to a binary code and run directly on OS, while Java code is translated into Java byte-code and interpreted by Dalvik Virtual Machine (VM). At Android 2.2 or higher, a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler is added to Dalvik VM to analyze and optimize the Java byte-code while the program is running (for example, JIT can compile a part of the byte-code to binary code before its execution). But in many cases, native code still runs faster than Java code.

> Java code is run by Dalvik VM on Android. Dalvik VM is specially designed for systems with constrained hardware resources (memory space, processor speed, and so on).

The second source for performance improvements at NDK is that native code allows developers to make use of some processor features that are not accessible at Android SDK, such as NEON, a Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) technology, allowing multiple data elements to be processed in parallel. One particular coding task example is the color conversion for a video frame or a photo. Suppose we are to convert a photo of 1920x1280 pixels from the RGB color space to the YCbCr color space. The naive approach is to apply a conversion formula to every pixel (that is, over two million pixels). With NEON, we can process multiple pixels at one time to reduce the processing time.

The third aspect is that we can optimize the critical code at an assembly level, which is a common practice in desktop software development.

Disadvantage

NDK cannot access lots of APIs available in the Android SDK directly, and developing in NDK will always introduce extra complexity into your application.

Solution 3 - Android

The Android NDK is a companion tool used only in conjunction with Android SDK which allows application developers to build performance-critical portions of their apps by use of native (C/C++) code.

This provide benefits in form of reuse of existing code and increased speed.

Please go through below links.

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Solution 4 - Android

>The Android NDK is a companion tool to the Android SDK that lets you build performance-critical portions of your apps in native code. It provides headers and libraries that allow you to build activities, handle user input, use hardware sensors, access application resources, and more, when programming in C or C++. If you write native code, your applications are still packaged into an .apk file and they still run inside of a virtual machine on the device. The fundamental Android application model does not change.

The following links also answers your question:

What is NDK?

When to Develop in Native Code

NDK Download

How to build NDK app

how to work with NDK

10 tips for Android NDK

Solution 5 - Android

> The Android NDK is a toolset that lets you embed components that make > use of native code in your Android applications. > > Android applications run in the Dalvik virtual machine. The NDK allows > you to implement parts of your applications using native-code > languages such as C and C++. This can provide benefits to certain > classes of applications, in the form of reuse of existing code and in > some cases increased speed.

Source: http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/overview.html

> > The Android NDK is a companion tool to the Android SDK that lets you > build performance-critical portions of your apps in native code. It > provides headers and libraries that allow you to build activities, > handle user input, use hardware sensors, access application resources, > and more, when programming in C or C++. If you write native code, your > applications are still packaged into an .apk file and they still run > inside of a virtual machine on the device. The fundamental Android > application model does not change.

Source: http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html

Solution 6 - Android

NDK is just a set of tools which lets you to write C/C++ codes for your application.For example suppose you want to add a critical function/performance to your app and you want to write it in C/C++ then eclipse or any other IDE will not allow you to write your C/C++ and in that case you have to use NDK and integrate it in your app.

Solution 7 - Android

NDK is a toolset that allows you to implement parts of your app using native-code languages such as C and C++....Checkout this https://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

Solution 8 - Android

>Android NDK (native development kit)

Android Native Development Kit (NDK) is developers to write code in C/C++ that compiles to native code

>Why should one use it?

The source code is compiled directly into machine code for the CPU (and not into an intermediate language, as with Java) then developers are able to get the best performance

How can one use it?

Here best tutorials

https://developer.android.com/ndk/index.html

https://www.androidauthority.com/android-ndk-everything-need-know-677642/

https://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/ehchua/programming/android/Android_NDK.html

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