Learning Embedded Android N Programming

From Dalvik to ART runtime

The original Android runtime implementation was Dalvik. Dalvik was a virtual machine, specifically created for Android, due to the necessity to target low-memory devices. It was an integral part of the system until Android KitKat.

As we already said, Android applications are mostly written in Java. When Dalvik was the in-use runtime system, the Java code was compiled into bytecode. This bytecode was then translated to Dalvik bytecode and finally stored into a .dex (Dalvik Executable). After this procedure, Dalvik was able to run the Android app.

Although Dalvik had been designed for slow devices, with low memory, its performance has never been astonishing, not even when the Just-In-Time compilation was introduced, back ...