Many giants have tested Hongmeng system: 60% faster than Android

As we all know, Huawei has been suppressed and hit recently, but Huawei did not sit still and wait for death. It quickly launched the "spare tire plan" to actively fight back and counterattack. The HiSilicon "spare tire chip" in the safe and Huawei's self-developed system have also begun to turn positive. In fact, looking back at the development history of Huawei HiSilicon Semiconductor in recent years, it has to be said that the HiSilicon chips of the year were really bad, but Huawei still persisted in the doubts. Now there is the reborn HiSilicon Kirin 980 processor, the most advanced 7nm process, less than one square centimeter in size, and 6.9 billion transistors are directly stuffed into it. Based on CPU, GPU, NPU, ISP, DDR, a heterogeneous architecture with full system integration optimization is designed. Although the performance is not as good as Snapdragon 855, it is enough to be compared with Qualcomm Snapdragon 855. After all, the gap is not that big. Although ARM has announced the termination of its cooperation with Huawei, Huawei has bought out the exclusive R&D and use rights of ARM V8 architecture, which also means that Kirin chips will not be cut off.

In fact, in addition to chips, Huawei's new operating system "HongMeng" has also been promoted from "spare tire". Huawei's self-developed new operating system can definitely be said to be one of the hottest topics in the technology circle this year. Google removed models such as Huawei Mate20 Pro and Huawei P30 Pro from the first batch of Android Q test lists, but then ridiculously added them back. This round of "sexy operations" like children playing house shows that it is imperative for Huawei to launch its own system, because even if you don't do it now, you will definitely do it in the future. Why not launch it as soon as possible?

In fact, the editor mentioned yesterday that Huawei has released several pictures of the Hongmeng system interface on the Huawei Central website. At the same time, it has also applied for a patent for the Hongmeng system interface in Europe. On May 24, Huawei also applied for trademarks for "ARK", "HUAWEI ARK OS", "ARK OS", "HUAWEI ARK COMPILER" and "HUAWEI ARK" on the website of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), which are literally translated as "Ark", "Huawei Ark Operating System", "Ark Operating System", "Huawei Ark Compiler" and "Huawei Ark". Ark means "Noah's Ark" - a ship to avoid the end of the world, which echoes the domestic "Hongmeng", and has far-reaching significance in opening a new era.

According to the pictures of the design interface of Huawei's Hongmeng system exposed by ***, the overall design style is closer to Huawei's EMUI style. This can be said to be a great thing for Huawei fans. After all, they are more familiar with the design interface and usage habits of the current Huawei EMUI system, which is intended to become a substitute for Google's Android system.

In fact, for a company like Huawei, it is not difficult to build an operating system. The difficulty lies in improving the APP ecosystem, which will be a long and arduous task for Huawei's "Hongmeng" system. Although Huawei's "Hongmeng operating system" is compatible with existing Android apps, this can greatly simplify the ecological process for APP developers, and they do not have to adapt to the new system from scratch.

What is the future fate of Huawei's development of a new operating system?

The operating system is the soul of today's technology industry, and the upcoming operating system is a system that integrates computers, mobile phones, cars and other devices. Recently, some media revealed that Huawei has tested the Hongmeng system. Previously, 1 million mobile phones were used for intensive testing, and it has also received strong support from many domestic giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. For example, Tencent's QQ team and Huawei's EMUI team have established a joint laboratory. Through a strong combination, the two have developed a high-performance version of the QQ program based on the Ark compiler. In addition, 360 has also directly publicly supported Huawei, saying: "Actively participate in the ecological construction of domestic computing platforms and fully adapt to new operating systems represented by Huawei Hongmeng." At the same time, industry insiders revealed that domestic mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO and vivo have also sent relevant technical personnel to Huawei to conduct actual testing of Huawei's "Hongmeng system". It has to be said that many domestic technology giants, although there is usually great competition between some companies, are never ambiguous in the face of major issues. They have chosen to join forces with Huawei to unite and fire the first shot of counterattack for Huawei.

Huawei's Hongmeng system will be 60% faster than Android?

As for Google's Android system and Huawei's Hongmeng system, both are developed based on the open source system Linux, and both have made a lot of optimizations to the Linux system. Previously, Huawei's consumer business CEO revealed that in the Huawei EMUI5.0 era, Huawei had adjusted the underlying architecture of the Android system, dynamically adjusted Android's memory and running memory, and replaced the traditional EXT4 with the F2FS file system, which improved the overall system fluency by 20%. Google asked Huawei to tell them about this technology for optimizing the Android system, but Huawei refused, after all, this is its own patented core technology.

Now, Huawei's Hongmeng system will certainly integrate its own EROFS super file system and Huawei's Ark compiler. After the APK is packaged by Huawei's Ark compiler, it will also be smoother and lighter on the Huawei system. So it is naturally much faster than the Android system.

What is this Ark Compiler?

You should know that the current compilation of the Android system itself is to translate the code into machine code through the internal APK virtual machine, not to run directly. The code that runs directly is the built-in ART virtual machine process, so the execution method of "interpreting while running" is bound to cause a large occupation of system resources. The virtual machine process needs to dynamically load machine code, execute machine code, and dynamically link the runtime library called by the application code. This efficiency is still slower than compiled languages, which is why Android phones have a lot of random freezes. When Apple's IOS system executes software programs, it uses machine code that the CPU can directly understand, so there is no need for the parsing process unique to Android phones. This is also why the fluency of the Android system has always been inferior to that of Apple's iOS.

What is the disruption brought by Huawei's Ark compiler? First of all, Ark's memory recycling mechanism recycles as it is used. There is no need to suspend the application during recycling, and the random jams caused by memory recycling are eliminated. Secondly, static compilation has been completed when the APK is developed and packaged, and the instructions are uniformly replaced with machine language that the system can understand, which saves the "translation" step. There is no need for cumbersome virtual machine operation, and the extra overhead of dynamic compilation of the virtual machine is completely eliminated. It can be seen that Huawei directly solves this problem. The Ark compiler first changes the efficiency from translating and executing at the same time to compiling machine code in advance and executing it directly (no need to compile again during runtime), so there is no need to rely on the mobile phone itself for compilation, and the efficiency and performance will be greatly improved. With the Ark compiler, mobile phones can achieve a 24% increase in system operation fluency and a 44% increase in system response performance.

Currently, Tencent has jointly developed with Huawei a high-performance version of the QQ program based on the Ark compiler, as well as a technical version of Weibo. It has to be said that the performance improvement after using Huawei's Ark compiler is subversive, changing the previous problems of bloated software and slow operation, and the operating fluency of the Weibo Express version has been directly improved by 60%! This is absolutely very attractive to many domestic Internet manufacturers, such as Alibaba's Taobao, Alipay, Tencent's WeChat, JD.com's JD Shopping APP, etc. If compiled with the Ark compiler, these APPs can run on Huawei's system, performing more smoothly and more lightweight.

*** Regarding the issue that everyone is most concerned about, can other domestic mobile phones be pre-installed with Huawei's Hongmeng system?

After consulting a lot of information, the editor found that currently in the global smartphone market, there are only two mobile phone manufacturers in the world that have made compilers for their own mobile phones. One of them is the world's number one - Samsung, and the other is Huawei. Among processor manufacturers, Intel also has its own dedicated compiler. They all had a common goal, which is to make the program run more smoothly on their own devices and have better performance.

And they all have a common feature. To put it bluntly, this compiler is optimized for its own CPU processor. This also means that Huawei's Ark compiler can only get the best improvement from the hardware level for mobile phones equipped with Huawei's own Kirin chips. As we all know, most domestic manufacturers are currently equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. This also means that it is of little significance to other mobile phone manufacturers. For domestic consumers, even if other domestic mobile phones can be pre-installed with Huawei's Hongmeng system, the overall experience brought by it will definitely not be as good as Huawei's own mobile phones and the innate best experience.

At this critical point, Huawei is facing various challenges, but its attitude has always been firm. Even if you don't give me the Android system, I will develop my own system; if you don't give me chips, I will develop my own chips. For Huawei and Ren Zhengfei, being able to survive this crisis is like a rebirth from the ashes. This is why the development of domestic operating systems can resonate so much with the Chinese people. This incident also reminds us again that only by truly mastering technology can we control our own destiny.

***, friends, what are your views and opinions on this Huawei Hongmeng system? If Huawei launches the first Huawei Mate30 series mobile phone equipped with Huawei Hongmeng system in the second half of the year, will you choose to buy a Huawei new system mobile phone? Welcome to leave a message in the comment area to discuss!