The Android developer community has released an Android L emulator image specifically for Intel's x86 64-bit architecture.
Android app developers can now download a new 64-bit Android L emulator image from Google, but there's a big catch: It will only work on x86 Intel-based processors.
It will allow developers to build or optimize older apps for the upcoming Android L OS and its new 64-bit architecture.
The new emulator will allow app developers to optimize their software for 64-bit versions of Android L.
Moving to 64-bit increases the addressable memory space, allows a larger number of registers and new instructions sets for developers.
Apps built on Java will automatically gain the benefits of 64-bit but those built on the Android NDK will need some optimization to include the x86_64 build target.
In a Google+ post, the company said app creators will be able to access a larger amount of addressable memory space with 64-bit support, along with a bigger number of registers and new instruction sets. While apps built using Java will automatically access all those cool features, Google says apps made using the Android NDK will take some additional optimization to achieve full 64-bit support.
Using the new emulator developers will only be able to create apps for Intel's chips (Bail Trail and Atom) and Google's yet to release an emulator for ARM architecture (namely the 64-bit ARMv8) on which NVIDIA's 64-bit K1 chipset and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 are built.
Of course, the vast majority of Android devices use ARM-based processors but there's no word on when a 64-bit emulator will be released for those kinds of CPUs.
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