Android Kernel Features
List of Kerenl features unique to Android
- Binder - corba-like IPC
- used instead of SysV IPC for interprocess communication
- The Linux version of Binder was originally derived from a project by PalmSource to implement a CORBA-like message-passing or method invocation system. Documentation on that system is at: http://www.angryredplanet.com/~hackbod/openbinder/docs/html/index.html
- ashmem - Android share memory
- PMEM - Process memory allocator
- logger - system logging facility
- This is the kernel support for the 'logcat' command
- The kernel driver for the serial devices for logging are in the source code drivers/android/logging.c
- See Android logger for more information
- wakelock - used for power management
- Holds machine awake on a per-event basis until wakelock is released
- See Android Power Management for detailed information
- oom handling modifications
- lowmem notifications
- alarm
- paranoid network security
Resources
- Peter McDermott's excellent description of his work to port Android to the Nokia N810.
- See http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/Linux-For-Devices-Articles/Porting-Android-to-a-new-device/
- Also, see his annotated list of modified and added kernel files, at: http://www.linuxfordevices.com/files/misc/porting-android-to-a-new-device-p3.html
- Jollen Chen's excellent presentation on system-level Android features, including an overview of kernel features unique to Android: Note: Parts of the presentation are in Chinese
