Revealed: The amazing BlackBerry wizardry that created its 'better Android than Android'
- It's sad that negative BlackBerry articles get negative reactions here, and positive BlackBerry articles get negative reactions here....
Perhaps the community should have some "in the locker room" discussion, so that the soap opera plays out behind closed doors, and the readers can benefit from shared information without the rhetoric. After all, why is it bad that information that may be old, gets re-posted?? Don't you want good news being shared continuously? Spread the good side of the brand and all?11-27-13 02:08 AMLike 0 - so this is why the androidcentral guys are all p!ssed?
I have written quite a bit about how Google may lose control of Android, and its attempts to regain control, by encouraging developers to write to Google-specific service APIs. If Google loses control and Android binaries becomes a portable, then "Android the OS" ceases to matter. For example, here last week.11-27-13 03:10 AMLike 0 -
- Yeah, but in Cyberspace no one can hear you scream I guess.
Our London Correspondent should be back at his desk given the time over there, whereas in Ottawa it'll be sunrise shortly.
Apologies to anyone who the link in my original post doesn't/didn't work for. It was a copy/paste (and then a correction) in the CB App and it works for me strangely enough.
Anyway who really knows what the AC guys are upset about. They can just grab a ROM when they want one, but BlackBerry's long term stance is looking more and more viable by the week lately
CB10 via Z1011-27-13 03:41 AMLike 0 -
I understand someone at BlackBerry is trying to pump up their engineering group's image. Every company tries to do that, and I don't blame them for it. It's not wrong, though, for others to react to this by introducing a differerent perspective.
I also think it's worth pointing out that if QNX hadn't been a Canadian company (if they had been a French company for instance) then BB10 would have been built on Linux and this particular bit of work wouldn't have been necessary to begin with. In fact, BB10 and this level of android runtime would have made it to market sooner and probably would have seen more success by now.
Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalk11-27-13 03:58 AMLike 2 - Granted, there may have been some more success at this stage had not QNX been implemented and rather BlackBerry had gone down the route you describe, but I imagine the QNX memory management qualities will prove to be essential in a 'pairing of platforms' such as that which we may soon be seeing.
CB10 via Z1011-27-13 04:18 AMLike 2 - I also think it's worth pointing out that if QNX hadn't been a Canadian company (if they had been a French company for instance) then BB10 would have been built on Linux and this particular bit of work wouldn't have been necessary to begin with. In fact, BB10 and this level of android runtime would have made it to market sooner and probably would have seen more success by now.danprown likes this.11-27-13 11:15 AMLike 1
- Exactly right. Dan Dodge sold Mike L a bag of software goods and 200 guys for 200 million and Mike L bungled up the execution by rendering the thousands of RIM's workers obsolete.
The whole premise of this "wizardry" claim is basically that BBRY, now going for almost 4 full years have been tinkering with QNX to ...run Andorid apps, but again...almost perfectly... and... in a future release...coming soon to a carrier near you (or not).
I think it's just a reaction to the hyperbole in the article we're discussing. What BB has done here is good work, but it's not really a novel idea. I think "wizardry" is hyperbole. This idea and variations of it have been implemented in various OS teams and even open source projects going back as far as 30 years now.
I understand someone at BlackBerry is trying to pump up their engineering group's image. Every company tries to do that, and I don't blame them for it. It's not wrong, though, for others to react to this by introducing a differerent perspective.
I also think it's worth pointing out that if QNX hadn't been a Canadian company (if they had been a French company for instance) then BB10 would have been built on Linux and this particular bit of work wouldn't have been necessary to begin with. In fact, BB10 and this level of android runtime would have made it to market sooner and probably would have seen more success by now.
Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalkapp_Developer and mikeo007 like this.11-27-13 12:35 PMLike 2 -
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It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia or The League are much funnier, IMHO.
App_Dev, in your option, which is better for providing a truly trusted computer base for a VM: a monolithic hypervisor or a microkernel?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/video/Ff711504
http://www.ok-labs.com/blog/entry/mi...s-hypervisors/Last edited by morlock_man; 11-27-13 at 02:02 PM.
11-27-13 01:51 PMLike 0 - App_Dev, in your option, which is better for providing a truly trusted computer base for a VM: a monolithic hypervisor or a microkernel?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/video/Ff711504
http://www.ok-labs.com/blog/entry/mi...s-hypervisors/
On mobile devices, I don't think either makes sense. There are just much more efficient ways to achieve any use case that I've heard yet.
Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalk11-27-13 02:50 PMLike 0 - You mean for servers? Yeah, IMO Microsoft is right, their approach makes the most sense for servers.
On mobile devices, I don't think either makes sense. There are just much more efficient ways to achieve any use case that I've heard yet.
Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalk
What about future code development?
Which is easiest to maintain across software generations, a microkernel or a monolithic kernel?
You've stopped making sense to me. Your words are becoming more like an insect buzzing around than actual conversation.
And speaking of App Development, which ones are yours?11-27-13 03:03 PMLike 0 -
Neutrino has had its best successes in computers that have virtually unlimited power like cars, powerplant control systems, etc. In those environments switching from kernel/supervisor space to various processes in user space and back again a bunch of times isn't a big deal. It is a big deal on a phone.
What about future code development?
There are people on this site who have an absurdly exaggerated view of what microkernels give you in real life. People think Linux or NT or modern Mach don't have loadable modules, for instance.
Which is easiest to maintain across software generations?
A microkernel or a monolithic kernel?
You've stopped making sense.
Speaking of App Development, which ones are yours?
A very long time ago I worked on the Mach team. By very long time ago, I mean back when QNX was actually interesting.
Sent from my iPhone 5S using TapatalkLast edited by app_Developer; 11-27-13 at 03:29 PM.
Tre Lawrence and mikeo007 like this.11-27-13 03:17 PMLike 2 -
And yet, when they went to build WP7 and WP8, they did not use a real-time kernel or a microkernel. Why do you think that is?
I think it's because neither RT or microkernels make any sense in a phone. The list of companies that know/knew this include Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Google, Palm, and even Samsung.
Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalk11-27-13 03:28 PMLike 0 - Context swtiching in QNX is faster than any monolithic kernel. They considered it necessary for providing a true real time OS that can respond dynamically to a changing environment.
Is a trusted computing base important in your idea of where mobile computing is going into the future?
Does having a trusted computing base factor into your vision of autonomous cars?
Do you think putting hardware into the same memory space as the trusted platform increases or decreases reliability and stability?
If code is so easy to maintain across generations, why all the software compatibility issues across generations of Windows?
And finally...
So you wrote some secret super popular apps for other platforms that you can't mention and claim to help develop the half-a$$ed microkernel that was hybridized into OSX, meaning you can lay claim to helping to build one of the largest corporations on the planet by giving them the codebase to work from.
*cough* bulls#it *cough*
Do you also cure cancer in your spare time?
[Edit: Also, I don't supposed that the fact that QNX was first to the table with its, now patented, SMP implementation has anything to do with their decision to avoid using a microkernel in a mobile environment.]11-27-13 03:35 PMLike 2 - Here's a thought to consider: Microsoft has an incredible kernel team. They have shipped multiple real-time kernels. They have shipped microkernels.
And yet, when they went to build WP7 and WP8, they did not use a real-time kernel or a microkernel. Why do you think that is?
I think it's because neither RT or microkernels make any sense in a phone. The list of companies that know/knew this include Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, Google, Palm, and even Samsung.
Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalk
My experience with real time kernels and wireless is simply one of R&D and time to market. It's hard to pay for development over and over for code that can be reused and skip the development. You give up optimization and performance for time to market and cost. This is only possible because of Moore's Law where higher processing can make up for less optimized performance. Years ago, products would have longer development and life cycles so you could spend more time on them. Nowadays, products are used for less time and then replaced. Going from a real time OS to a non real-time linux kernel made performance and stability worse in every sense, but you could pull in packages that would not have otherwise been possible to develop due to time, cost, or skill level. I'm thinking of Linksys and OpenWrt off the top of my head.
For a specific wireless device that I have worked with, a real time kernel was *THE* biggest factor on whether it worked or worked well. Changing the kernel from 2.6.19 to 2.6.25 brought in a world of changes that caused months of development and QA. Things that *NEED* certain things to happen at certain times should be real time. It should be tuned for that product/application, and not a flexible platform that is meant to support lots of different chipsets.
Generally, IMO, developers that coded for embedded devices and real-time were way better than those that did not. I recall when one team was confused when their year+ code failed miserably on the bench but worked perfectly in a simulation. The difference was they used a 3GHz CPU with 8GB of RAM, and not a 333MHz with 32Mb of RAM and had no concept of limited resources and limited time to handle them.
So while I'm not a programmer, my experience is that real time kernels are invaluable to embedded devices and especially networking devices. Being able to prioritize stuff that needs to happen at a given time is what QoS is all about.11-27-13 09:13 PMLike 0 -
All schedulers prioritize running tasks. That's not a feature specific to RT. Real time schedulers just make specific guarantees that other schedulers don't. I think those guarantees are counter-productive in a smartphone since they reduce the latitude that the OS has to coalesce work. By not making specific timing guarantees, you can keep the CPU asleep for longer, etc.
As for non-RT kernels not working, WP8, iOS, Web OS, Palm OS and Android are all examples of other schedulers that work pretty well and are able to do things like streaming media and video calls and all those sorts of things that users expect, while still having the latitude to be really aggressive in sleeping the CPU, radios, etc.
The bigger picture for me is still whether it was worth the delays, cost and risk to buy QNX?
Sent from my Nexus 5 using TapatalkLast edited by app_Developer; 11-27-13 at 09:56 PM.
11-27-13 09:25 PMLike 0
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Revealed: The amazing BlackBerry wizardry that created its 'better Android than Android'
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