Last week, Intel announced that it had added x86 optimizations to Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich, but the text of the announcement and included quotes were vague and a bit contradictory given the open nature of Android development. After discussing the topic with Intel we’ve compiled a laundry list of the company’s work in Gingerbread and ICS thus far, and offered a few of our own thoughts on what to expect in 2012 as far as x86-powered smartphones and tablets are concerned.

The industry tends to focus on Intel’s manufacturing prowess and processor design. While these activities account for the overwhelming majority of Intel’s revenue, they mask the fact that Intel is also a major software developer in its own right. Chipzilla maintains its own compiler, math libraries, and performance-tuning software, contributes to Linux development, and offers its own app creation SDKs for MeeGo and Windows.

Intel’s contributions to Android (both Gingerbread and ICS) are significant and much more substantial than simply guaranteeing x86 compatibility. Santa Clara has submitted approximately 120 patches to Android, handles most of the x86 validation for the OS, and has contributed to the development of emulation software that supports both x86 and ARM in Linux, OS X, and Windows. The company is also working on adding hardware virtualization support for Android emulation on both Windows and Mac platforms and reports that this can improve Android emulation performance by up to 10x.

Android’s Native Development Kit (NDK) now includes support for x86 devices and the MMX/SSE/SSE2/SSE3 instruction sets. The NDK is a companion tool to the SDK and allows developers to use native code to maximize application performance rather than relying on Android’s APIs. The NDK can now be used to compile so-called “fat” binaries that will run on both x86 and ARM platforms. Intel has also contributed patches to both GCC and Google’s Bionic libc library, and the Android Market is up and running on x86 devices.

Intel’s focus on hardware emulation may seem tangential to Android performance on x86, but improving development environment performance and offering sophisticated analysis tools is one way Intel has traditionally (and successfully) fostered x86 adoption. Applications like Vtune and the Intel Graphics Performance Analyzer will be ported over for Android development and should give programmers targeting x86 a substantial leg up on optimizing their applications. ARM’s diverse ecosystem and the strong degree of competition between multiple vendors could actually help Intel position its own x86 chips as simpler solutions with unified feature sets and robust profiling software.

Of tablets and smartphones

Intel has yet to announce any formal difference between its Android strategy for tablets vs. smartphones, but the market trends related to this issue speak for themselves. For smartphones, Android remains the go-to platform, and there’s little indication that this will change in 2012 despite ongoing patent litigation. Windows Phone 7 should see an uptick in 2012 thanks to Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia, but unlike Apple, Microsoft seems content to collect patent revenue from Android rather than attempting to stamp the OS out of existence. Barring a massive judicial upset, Android is likely to remain Intel’s primary OS for smartphones through the end of next year.

The tablet situation is a bit different. While Android remains the only practical alternative to iOS, Android tablets have failed abysmally at competing with the iPad. There’s no evidence to suggest that x86-based tablets will inherently change consumer preferences, particularly since Microsoft and Intel remain perceptually joined at the hip.

That’s not to say that Android tablets can’t succeed, or that Intel isn’t interested in Clover Trail tablets running ICS, but Windows 8 is much more likely to boost Intel’s share of the tablet market than Ice Cream Sandwich. The only tablet that’s shown any sign of bucking this trend is the Kindle Fire, and early reviews of that device have been less than glowing. Even if the problems turn out to be launch/software-related, Intel might not be willing to sell hardware at the rock-bottom prices Amazon would want for any second-generation Kindle Fire.

Of course, all of this discussion is theoretical until vendors actually ship x86 smartphones and tablets in commercial volume, but we’re more optimistic on that front than we were a few months ago. To date, Intel’s smartphone and tablet demonstrations have been long on demo units, short on actual products. Scuttlebutt indicates that this will change in 2012. x86-based devices aren’t going to take the tablet or smartphone markets by storm, but both types of devices are rumored to offer competitive performance and battery life.

2012 is likely to be a ramp year for Atom in terms of design wins and the availability of top-tier software development tools. Intel hasn’t issued any sales predictions for the coming year, but the company is thoroughly invested in optimizing every aspect of Atom performance. The work we’ve seen thus far is just the first step in a larger strategy to build an ecosystem of x86 devices across both smartphones and tablets.

Read more of ExtremeTech’s Ice Cream Sandwich coverage