Nvidia Says Android Needs a Version of WHQL

[exfileme]

Google needs to set more boundaries before Android fragmentation spins way out of control.

Nvidia Says Android Needs a Version of WHQL : Read more

 

[solomaniac85]

Nvidia, shut up and stop trying to tell other companys what to do and bashing them jesus. Just because you don't get your way or another company does it there way doesnt mean you can just bash them and tell them what to do even if tegra is integrated into android.

 

[jhansonxi]

Windows only worked with x86 (MIPS and Alpha support was abandoned long ago). iOS only has to work with Apple's limited hardware selection. Those are huge differences compared to the various ARM and other architectures Android has to work with.

Back before WHQL the largest desktop driver problem on Windows was DirectX which was entirely M$'s fault. You would install the latest video card driver from a manufacturer only to have it downgraded to a broken/outdated M$ driver when you installed DirectX. Made IT departments very unhappy.

WHQL was more important for server drivers since it helped improve stability and uptime.

Problems supporting different screen sizes? Really? Since when is that a driver problem? PC applications have to work with a multitude of screen sizes and unlike phones, the end user can change them at will. Same with cameras.

 

[beayn]

[citation][nom]solomaniac85[/nom]Nvidia, shut up and stop trying to tell other companys what to do and bashing them jesus. Just because you don't get your way or another company does it there way doesnt mean you can just bash them and tell them what to do even if tegra is integrated into android.[/citation]Read the whole article. It isn't just Nvidia asking for this to reduce fragmentation. There was a list of other companies asking for it as well. They all want less fragmentation for a more stable experience.

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]Windows only worked with x86 (MIPS and Alpha support was abandoned long ago). iOS only has to work with Apple's limited hardware selection. Those are huge differences compared to the various ARM and other architectures Android has to work with[/citation]
Seriously?
...
The several billions of combinations of motherboard, cpu, ram, GPU, soundcard, network, HDD and anything else you can think of in a "just an x86" is suddenly brushed off as one thing? Phones and tablets can only dream of having as many divergent combinations as PCs from the last 20 years
...
This is a valid suggestion to improve stability across the industry and for the end user, having quality standards is not a bad thing no matter how you spin it to be an anti-MS rant, just because Android is (supposedly) open source does not mean we should live in a lawless "Wild West" environment

 

[nebun]

google does not understand the word "Fragmentation"

 

[alidan]

you want a solution, here, i got one...

1) no more manufacture custom anything. it ads bulk to the os and generally slows the system down
2) google implements a hardware test phase, it figures out what the hell can and cant work, and certs devices for os levels
3) an EASY to access menu with EVERY program that is running, so you can see what is takeing up background processes better.
4) some form of a hardware standard, so you dont rely on manufactures to create their own drivers, or windows, drivers built into the os handle most of the crap.

there, i fixed fragmentation.

[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]Windows only worked with x86 (MIPS and Alpha support was abandoned long ago). iOS only has to work with Apple's limited hardware selection. Those are huge differences compared to the various ARM and other architectures Android has to work with.Back before WHQL the largest desktop driver problem on Windows was DirectX which was entirely M$'s fault. You would install the latest video card driver from a manufacturer only to have it downgraded to a broken/outdated M$ driver when you installed DirectX. Made IT departments very unhappy.WHQL was more important for server drivers since it helped improve stability and uptime.Problems supporting different screen sizes? Really? Since when is that a driver problem? PC applications have to work with a multitude of screen sizes and unlike phones, the end user can change them at will. Same with cameras.[/citation]

look at a game, there is a MAJOR difference between 1280x720 and 2560x1600 (i think the biggest screen so far) im guessing that that is a problem when most pcs aren't even at 1920x1080 but something FAR less powerful has to drive far higher resolutions on the top end.

 

[ibnmuhammad]

As a dev, I have to agree with the various companies - Android is a down-right nightmare to develop for, even a simple web app behaves differently across different Samsung-only android devices.

Thus, I quit
And only worked on the iPhone version - some other poor guy was left to do the Android version.

Personally don't care about android - it's the latest spyware from Google, next to Chrome.

 

[xpeh]

[citation][nom]ibnmuhammad[/nom]As a dev, I have to agree with the various companies - Android is a down-right nightmare to develop for, even a simple web app behaves differently across different Samsung-only android devices.Thus, I quit And only worked on the iPhone version - some other poor guy was left to do the Android version.Personally don't care about android - it's the latest spyware from Google, next to Chrome.[/citation]


>Implying Apple has no spyware on all of their devices

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]Seriously?...The several billions of combinations of motherboard, cpu, ram, GPU, soundcard, network, HDD and anything else you can think of in a "just an x86" is suddenly brushed off as one thing?[/citation]Developing a driver that can cross-compile between different architectures isn't easy.

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]look at a game, there is a MAJOR difference between 1280x720 and 2560x1600 (i think the biggest screen so far) im guessing that that is a problem when most pcs aren't even at 1920x1080 but something FAR less powerful has to drive far higher resolutions on the top end.[/citation]True but that's not a driver problem that Nvidia is complaining about. WHQL only applies to drivers, not badly-implemented applications.

 

[solomaniac85]

[citation][nom]beayn[/nom]Read the whole article. It isn't just Nvidia asking for this to reduce fragmentation. There was a list of other companies asking for it as well. They all want less fragmentation for a more stable experience.[/citation]
My bad...Dident fully read it but with nivida bashing the ps3 with comparing it to a PC because of the deal that dident work with them and physx... Just put that comment from the article title.

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]xpeh[/nom]Enjoy paying $1000 for Apple's developer license and kit and getting only 70% of what you earn.[/citation]That's a policy similar to console development licensing (similar closed systems).

 

[marshal11]

[citation][nom]solomaniac85[/nom]My bad...Dident fully read it but with nivida bashing the ps3 with comparing it to a PC because of the deal that dident work with them and physx... Just put that comment from the article title.[/citation]

By PS3 I think you mean PS4? I don't think badly about that at all. Nvidia was flipped off by Sony and they just lost a buttload of money. So, if they were going to have a deal, Nvidia obviously knows the specs of the PS4. So it's not like they are saying bad stuff about it just because they can. They obviously know for a fact that the next gen of consoles are not going to be high end like the previous consoles were in their time. Which is disappointing.

 

[solomaniac85]

[citation][nom]marshal11[/nom]By PS3 I think you mean PS4? I don't think badly about that at all. Nvidia was flipped off by Sony and they just lost a buttload of money. So, if they were going to have a deal, Nvidia obviously knows the specs of the PS4. So it's not like they are saying bad stuff about it just because they can. They obviously know for a fact that the next gen of consoles are not going to be high end like the previous consoles were in their time. Which is disappointing.[/citation]
True true. I guess every company gets butthurt.

 

[ericburnby]

[citation][nom]xpeh[/nom]Enjoy paying $1000 for Apple's developer license and kit and gettingonly 70% of what you earn.[/citation]

It only costs $99 a year to become an iOS developer. The SDK is free to download. If you want to develop in-house Apps for your own devices (like for enterprise use) it costs you $299 per year. Don't know where you got that $1,000 figure from.

If you had a vending machine would you rather put it in Walmart and keep 70% or put it on some street corner and get 100%?

BTW, Google Play also takes 30% of the App price and gives you 70%. Geez, do people even think before they post?

 

[ddpruitt]

Nvidia is right. Fragmentation is horrible on Android. If you don't think so see how many different versions of CyanogenMod there are for such few devices. On the other hand you don't want to limit the inherent innovation available in such an open system. Perhaps the best idea is to standardize on a limited set of hardware so all you need is a single generic driver.

 

[slomo4sho]

The fragmentation is from the excessive modifications by the manufactures to the OS.

PCs also have a vast variation in hardware but all programs work because the OS is uniform.

 

[balister]

[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]Windows only worked with x86 (MIPS and Alpha support was abandoned long ago). iOS only has to work with Apple's limited hardware selection. Those are huge differences compared to the various ARM and other architectures Android has to work with.Back before WHQL the largest desktop driver problem on Windows was DirectX which was entirely M$'s fault. You would install the latest video card driver from a manufacturer only to have it downgraded to a broken/outdated M$ driver when you installed DirectX. Made IT departments very unhappy.WHQL was more important for server drivers since it helped improve stability and uptime.Problems supporting different screen sizes? Really? Since when is that a driver problem? PC applications have to work with a multitude of screen sizes and unlike phones, the end user can change them at will. Same with cameras.[/citation]

You really have no idea what you are talking about. WHQL was because started because so many crap drivers were being written for all kinds of hardware add ins that some computers were literally unusable becuase of constant blue screens due to badly written drivers. I worked for MS just before WHQL went into affect and the sheer number of calls we recieved because someone installed a bad driver that crashed the system was astounding. We then had to work with the user to uninstall the device driver in safe mode (which getting people into safe mode sometimes was as frustrating and just trying to solve the issue at hand). Once we got the user into Safe Mode, we'd uninstall the bad driver and then have them install one of the generic drivers that was shipped with Win 95 and 98 an their device would start working, but wouldn't have all the bells and whistles that the broken driver supposedly said it would have.

I can tell you for a fact that 95%+ of the blue screens caused in Windows 9x were due to bad drivers and a little less that 5% were caused by bad hardware or corrupted files (this is now about 95% of the blue screens since WHQL went in). I was able to actually trigger a known bug in Windows 98 with a system I build back then because I used quality parts with known good drivers where the machine would blue screen have 42 days, 7 hours, some odd minutes and second (in essence 4TB milliseconds) where a memory bit would overwrite itself and force the system to go through a reboot. Due to WHQL, you rarely see these issues anymore (badly written drivers causing blue screens).

So yes, Nvidia and other developers have it right, Google does need to institute something like WHQL so that all the hardware follows a certain setup so that when an App is written for Android it works across all Android devices properly, not just some.

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]balister[/nom]I can tell you for a fact that 95%+ of the blue screens caused in Windows 9x were due to bad drivers and a little less that 5% were caused by bad hardware or corrupted files (this is now about 95% of the blue screens since WHQL went in).[/citation]95% of the BSODs in Win95 were due to bad OS QA and it didn't become stable until OSR2. Win98 was unusable garbage until 98SE. NT until SP3. XP until SP2.

[citation][nom]balister[/nom]I was able to actually trigger a known bug in Windows 98 with a system I build back then because I used quality parts with known good drivers where the machine would blue screen have 42 days, 7 hours, some odd minutes and second (in essence 4TB milliseconds) where a memory bit would overwrite itself and force the system to go through a reboot.[/citation]There were many memory leak bugs in Windows back then that would result in a system freeze. Here is one of several I encountered: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154162

[citation][nom]balister[/nom]Nvidia and other developers have it right, Google does need to institute something like WHQL so that all the hardware follows a certain setup so that when an App is written for Android it works across all Android devices properly, not just some.[/citation]The whole point of drivers and the OS is to abstract the hardware from applications. SmugMug's CEO was complaining about display sizes. No Android driver is going to fix that, just like Windows drivers can't. If an app is hard-coded to a specific display size or aspect ratio, then it's not going to be correct for anything outside of that.

Cameras on phones aren't user-changeable so there is even less variety. Improvements may be needed at the API level but badly-designed drivers aren't going to be fixed by that. In the end it's the device OEM's problem to deal with and if the phone OEMs are not happy with the parts and developer support, then they will just switch to a better vendor. In the end the consumers will buy phones that work properly and the rest will disappear.

While WHQL was useful to OEMs due to the open-architecture of desktop PCs, phones are fixed platforms. If there are driver stability problems it's the device and phone manufacturers who have to fix it, not Google.

 

[InvalidError]

[citation][nom]ddpruitt[/nom]Nvidia is right. Fragmentation is horrible on Android. If you don't think so see how many different versions of CyanogenMod there are for such few devices.[/citation]
Unless you want to waste hundreds of MBs of storage space on drivers for stuff your phone/tablet does not have, you are going to have to make device-specific builds to include only drivers and kernel support for whatever hardware is present on the device, so that part of it is hardly avoidable as long as each phone/tablet manufacturer uses proprietary hardware combinations and configurations. PCs were much the same before nearly every major PC function got integrated into industry-standard chipsets manufactured by AMD and Intel to go along with their CPUs. This solved a large chunk of the Windows drivers hell.

Another difference between Android and Windows is that manufacturers can modify the Android kernel and other system files at will whereas Windows is closed-source so Android device manufacturers can address driver integration from the kernel space if necessary rather than be limited exclusively to modular drivers when trying to resolve optimization, integration and interoperability problems.

Not much point in having a WHQL-like initiative when every manufacturer can run their own custom kernel tailored to their specific CPU, IGP, RAM, etc. variants. Something like WHQL is only meaningful when dealing with a standard black-box OS.

 

[house70]

Proprietary kernels and drivers are what's holding Android development back. These manufacturers need to release code if they want apps compatible with their configurations. So far, the only line of hardware that has been transparent was Nexus.
The WHQL-like model worked because hardware manufacturers were eager to sell their stuff, and they could only gain traction if they released as-good-as-it-gets drivers along with it. When you get Android handset manufacturers to do the same for their modules (camera, radios, what-not) you'll get the same benefits, and we'll get a lot closer to the custom-made smartphone model that everyone wants.

 

[InvalidError]

[citation][nom]house70[/nom]Proprietary kernels and drivers are what's holding Android development back. These manufacturers need to release code if they want apps compatible with their configurations.[/citation]
Abstracting the hardware is the drivers and APIs' jobs. Since the phone/tablet manufacturers have full-control over every single bit of hardware that goes in their devices, they technically have everything they should possibly need to make hardware transparent to software.

Even if device manufacturers manage to provide by-the-book hardware abstraction to Android APIs, many programs run into trouble because they ignore design guidelines or misuse APIs. Most broken apps I have seen seem to belong to this category which has absolutely nothing to do with hardware or drivers.

 

[balister]

[citation][nom]jhansonxi[/nom]95% of the BSODs in Win95 were due to bad OS QA and it didn't become stable until OSR2. Win98 was unusable garbage until 98SE. NT until SP3. XP until SP2.There were many memory leak bugs in Windows back then that would result in a system freeze. Here is one of several I encountered: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154162The whole point of drivers and the OS is to abstract the hardware from applications. SmugMug's CEO was complaining about display sizes. No Android driver is going to fix that, just like Windows drivers can't. If an app is hard-coded to a specific display size or aspect ratio, then it's not going to be correct for anything outside of that.Cameras on phones aren't user-changeable so there is even less variety. Improvements may be needed at the API level but badly-designed drivers aren't going to be fixed by that. In the end it's the device OEM's problem to deal with and if the phone OEMs are not happy with the parts and developer support, then they will just switch to a better vendor. In the end the consumers will buy phones that work properly and the rest will disappear.While WHQL was useful to OEMs due to the open-architecture of desktop PCs, phones are fixed platforms. If there are driver stability problems it's the device and phone manufacturers who have to fix it, not Google.[/citation]

You're just proven that you have no clue. Did you even bother to read the KB article you just linked? It's for NT4, not 9x. Again, the BSoDs that may people saw in 9x were due to poorly written drivers before WHQL was instituted.

And yes, Google can fix SmugMug CEO's complaint by requiring that resolutions on phones follow a specific format like 16:9 or 4:3 instead of some of the wacky resolutions we see. If the resolutions followed a specific format, then a lot of the problems SmugMug's CEO mentioned would go away as it would simply be the system scaling the app to the resolution at hand if it followed something like 4:3 or 16:9.

 

[jhansonxi]

[citation][nom]balister[/nom]You're just proven that you have no clue. Did you even bother to read the KB article you just linked? It's for NT4, not 9x.[/citation]The problem is not exclusive to Win9x. I've encountered memory leaks on Win9x also but don't remember exact Q/KB numbers.
[citation][nom]balister[/nom]Again, the BSoDs that may people saw in 9x were due to poorly written drivers before WHQL was instituted.[/citation]I've seen WHQL drivers fail and I've used many non-WHQL drivers without problems. We can debate relative % of BSODs related to driver vs. OS bugs for eternity. Fundamentally the fixed-hardware configuration of a phone limits the usefulness of driver certification. It's even questionable for netbooks and laptops. Phone OEMs have the resources to deal with hardware and driver problems at the engineering level directly with the electronic component manufacturers. App developers shouldn't be accessing hardware directly, only through driver APIs. It's not Google's problem.
[citation][nom]balister[/nom]And yes, Google can fix SmugMug CEO's complaint by requiring that resolutions on phones follow a specific format like 16:9 or 4:3 instead of some of the wacky resolutions we see. If the resolutions followed a specific format, then a lot of the problems SmugMug's CEO mentioned would go away as it would simply be the system scaling the app to the resolution at hand if it followed something like 4:3 or 16:9.[/citation]While that may be useful at the widget/GUI library level, it's not something a driver should be concerned with.