With recent rumors regarding Google changing Dalvik to ART on Android, you might be wondering what these are, why they are important and why they will make a huge difference. ART has already been available to developers in Kit Kat but wasn’t quiet ready to be launched to the general public, in the upcoming version of Android 5.0 we do expect it to be ready.
What is a process virtual machine?
Both Dalvik and ART are Process Virtual Machines, they are also referred to as application virtual machines allows the operation system to run an application on the OS and the process will be automatically destroyed once it isn’t used any more. It provides an independent environment to execute and can execute in the same way on many different platforms.
What is Dalvik?
While there is not really a non-technical way to explain what a Process virtual machine is, Dalvik is a little easier, it is the way the application is executed on the operation system. Dalvik every time you open an app, there is code that is going to get compiled, the more you use the app the more code is going to get compiled in order to be executed.
What is ART?
ART is also a process virtual machine but executes an app in a different way then Dalvik. ART will pre-compile all of the code during the installation of the app. This brings a series of huge advantages to the user
What makes ART so much better then Dalvik?
Essentially ART will execute the code much faster, this brings a serie of advantages:
- Improved battery life
- Faster app execution (50% increase in speed)
- no lag when opening up an app
- reduced load on CPU
- Improved Catching apps in RAM
- More responsive UI
We can expect ART to release soon, but we won’t be able to make full advantage of it until Apps start to get optimized for this new software.
