Conveners
Android MC
- Lukasz Luba
- Karim Yaghmour (Opersys inc.)
- Amit Pundir
- Sumit Semwal (Linaro)
- John Stultz (Google)
- Mostafa Saleh (Google)
Description
The Android Micro Conference brings the upstream community and Android systems developers together to discuss issues and changes to the Android platform and their dependencies and interactions with the Linux kernel, allowing for collaboration on solutions for upstream.
Some highlights of progress made since last yearโs MC:
- Community consolidation around the aosp-devs.org organization
- An example of device longevity discussions: Pixel devices in the field were up-reved to 6.1: https://www.androidauthority.com/pixel-phones-kernel-upgrade-march-update-3532360/
- Per-app v2 mem cgroups were shipped w/ Android 16, and vendors are starting to make use of it.
- For the 16k page size effort, discussions on CMA minimum alignments lead to relaxing this requirement for 16KB to reduce memory overhead from CMA regions. And discussions on ELF padding page-cache read-ahead and fault-around lead to later guard regions blocking fault-around and conclusion that the readahead issue may not be worth the effort to solve (for which android proceeded with only limiting fault-around similar to guard regions).
- Feedback and discussion from maintainers around ublk helped prioritize development as Ming provided some pointers for offloaded lz4 de-compression into the kernel with only the metadata I/Os being served from user-space. Future enhancements and investigation include suspend support for ublk process, BPF offloading and device mapper-style I/O control.
- The GBL presentation at LPC sparked collaboration with U-Boot maintainers - who began experimenting with GBL- and caught the attention of ARM SystemReady and EBBR leads, leading to ongoing discussions around standardizing Android boot.
Potential discussion topics for this year include:
- Updates and next-steps on Generic Boot Loader efforts
- Issues around supporting both 4KB and 16KB devices
- Deprecation of Ashmem and Rust Ashmem
- Efficient metric collection using BPF (iterators)
- Android Virtualization framework (AVF), updates, support, use cases
- AutoFDO for Android userspace and kernel
- Binder Priority Inheritance
- KUNIT Testing
- Discussions on collaborating with the new AOSP model
MC leads:
- Lukasz Luba lukasz.luba@arm.com
- Amit Pundir amit.pundir@linaro.org
- Mostafa Saleh smostafa@google.com
- Sumit Semwal sumit.semwal@linaro.org
- John Stultz jstultz@google.com
- Karim Yaghmour karim.yaghmour@opersys.com
-
Mr Dmitrii Merkurev (Google)13/12/2025, 10:00
Android boot flow and GBL quick recap
ย ย - Current problems
ย ย - GBL updatesAndroid meets FIT (Flattened Image Tree)
ย ย - Existing boot headers structures vs FIT
ย ย - Adoption proposal
ย ย - Expected problemsAndroid + EFIStub
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ย ย - UKI (Unified Kernel Image) adoption
ย ย - GBL as a EFIStub proposal -
Tengfei Fan13/12/2025, 10:15
In an increasing number of scenarios, the use of S2D (Suspend to Disk) functionality is required or expected on mobile. For example, when a mobile is running lowing on battery, it can use the S2D suspend process to save the userโs current state and then enter a power-down mode. Once the battery level is sufficient again, the device can quickly resume the previous state through the S2D resume...
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Jeongik Cha (Google)13/12/2025, 10:30
Running a full-featured Linux VM on Android has been a long-standing desire for developers and power users. This presentation details a project that leverages the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) to run a guest Debian OS with deep integration into the host Android environment.
We will discuss recent advancements, including the implementation of hardware-accelerated graphics based on...
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Cong Zhang13/12/2025, 10:45
In virtualization environments, system reliability and efficient debugging are essentialโespecially for memory-sensitive trusted virtual machines (VMs). This presentation introduces a ramdump-based solution that captures key memory data when a VM crashes, without rebooting the device. It helps developers quickly analyze system states and resolve issues, improving reliability and maintainability.
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T.J. Mercier (Google - Android Kernel Team)13/12/2025, 11:00
Android currently collects telemetry data from devices in the field. While these metrics are important and can indicate overall system health issues, they are often lacking enough low-level system information that is necessary for finding root causes.
Android has been striving to improve BPF support to enable developers to extend the Linux kernel by creating BPF programs. This development...
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"Ruinland" ChuanTzu Tsai (Andes Technology)13/12/2025, 11:15
Running Android on RISC-V platforms has been a long-standing goal, filled with technical hurdles and real world economical evaluation.
Initially I proposed the idea at Andes Technology, it didn't pan out, leading me to pursue its realization at SiFive. However, due to org restructuring, I was eventually laid off from SiFive. (Hi Samuel ๐)
Ultimately, I returned to Andes to finish what I...
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William McVicker13/12/2025, 12:00
This talk dives into the progress Google and Linaro have made upstreaming Pixel 6 and the hurdles weโve faced including:
- Integrating with existing Exynos drivers
- Challenges of modularizing critical drivers like timers, clocks, and regulators
- Whatโs coming next upstream?
Lastly, we will talk about how we are integrating the Pixel 6 upstream drivers into...
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Tiffany Yang (Google)13/12/2025, 12:15
KUnit is the only unit testing framework in the Linux kernel, but Android kernel changes are rarely accompanied by KUnit tests. Aside from the relative monotony associated with writing tests, one of the main barriers to more widespread KUnit testing seems to its inability (perceived or actual) to accommodate the complex use cases that we are developing features for.
When test code doesn't...
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Yiwei Huang13/12/2025, 12:30
MPAM (Memory System Resource Partitioning and Monitoring) enables fine-grained control over shared resources such as CPU caches, memory bandwidth, and interconnect bandwidth. In a typical memory hierarchy, the data path looks like this:
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CPU(L2/L3) โ NoC โ SLC โ DDR
This structure includes System Level Cache between CPU and DDR memory. So how to make SLC more efficient?
MPAM will assign... -
Isaac Manjarres (Google)13/12/2025, 12:45
Android relies on the anonymous shared memoryโashmemโallocator to allocate anonymous (i.e. not file-backed) buffers that can easily and quickly be shared between processes via file descriptors.
Ashmem is an Android specific memory allocator that is implemented on top of the Linux kernelโs shmem subsystem, which allows for fast memory sharing, as all processes that refer to a shmem buffer...
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Juan Yescas (Google), Kalesh Singh (Google)13/12/2025, 13:00
The transition to a 16kB base page size creates a significant compatibility issue for legacy ELFs built with 4kB segment alignment. This misalignment can place Read-Execute (RX) and Read-Write (RW) segments within a single page, which would require insecure RWX mappings. While recompiling is the ideal fix, it is often impossible for apps that depend on **unmaintained, closed-source third-party...
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Juan Yescas, Kalesh Singh (Google)13/12/2025, 13:15
Content:
Android's transition to 16kb page sizes necessitates that hardware components work seamlessly with 16kb page sizes in order to get optimal performance. This presentation will focus on hardware and software recommendations for devices running with 16kb page sizes.
This section will highlight the hardware design decisions that need to be made to support 16kb page sizes...
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Juan Yescas (Google), Kalesh Singh (Google)
Content:
Android already supports 16kb page sizes and the number of devices supporting 16kb page sizes will increase in the future. A key challenge with 16kb page sizes is their potential to increase the memory footprint. In this presentation, we will explore several memory optimization strategies that partners should consider to help mitigate this issue, focusing on areas such...
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Juan Yescas (Google), Kalesh Singh (Google)
Content:
Android already supports 16kb page sizes and the number of devices supporting 16kb page sizes will increase in the future. A key challenge with 16kb page sizes is their potential to increase the memory footprint. In this presentation, we will explore several memory optimization strategies that partners should consider to help mitigate this issue, focusing on areas such...
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Cong Zhang
Secure devices play a critical role in trusted virtual machines (VMs), serving as the foundation for protecting sensitive data and maintaining system integrity. When a trusted VM enters an abnormal or compromised state, it becomes essential to sanitize and reset secure devices properly to prevent the leakage of confidential information into untrusted environments. This presentation explores...
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Cong Zhang
Secure devices play a critical role in trusted virtual machines (VMs), serving as the foundation for protecting sensitive data and maintaining system integrity. When a trusted VM enters an abnormal or compromised state, it becomes essential to sanitize and reset secure devices properly to prevent the leakage of confidential information into untrusted environments. This presentation explores...
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