Introduction

This document will guide you through installing the Intel® Atom™ x86 image for Android* Jelly Bean, which can be used for development on Intel’s x86 architecture.

Prerequisites

The Android x86 Emulator Image requires the Android SDK to be installed. For instructions on installing and configuring the Android SDK, refer to the Android developer website (http://developer.android.com/sdk/).

Optional: The x86 Emulator Image for Android can be accelerated using Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM). For more information, refer to the "Optimization" section of this document.

Known Issues:

Camera issue: camera crashes when recording video on android 4.2 system image, this issue has been reported on: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=41227

Browser issue: browser randomly crashes the emulator on Vista 32bit machine. It has been reported on: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=42733

Stability issue: The emulator may crash when using 1024 for the device RAM size of an AVD. Intel is currently investigating and further characterizing this issue.

Installation

Downloading Manually

Go to http://www.intel.com/software/android. Download the Intel x86 Atom System Image.



Navigate to the directory where the Android SDK is located. For Windows, this directory is different depending on whether you installed it for "anyone using this computer" or "just for me". If you installed for everyone then it would be located in "c:\Program Files (x86)\android" on a 64-bit Windows machine. If you installed for just you then it is located at "c:\users\<username>\AppData\local\android". On a mac it is typically installed to "/home/<username>/Desktop/android-sdk-macosx/". The following instructions and screenshots are for a windows install "just for me" but the files need to be extracted to the same relative path to your Android install whether on Windows or Mac.



The system-images directory contains Android system images, separated by architecture: If an "android-17" directory" for API level 17 does not exist then you will need to create it.



Expand android-17 (this directory contains API Level 17 system images):



Extract the x86 directory contained in the downloaded system image archive directly into the android-17 directory. The directory structure should have the following files:



The system image is now installed and ready to be used.

Using the System Image

Start the Android AVD Manager and create a new AVD, setting "Target" to "Android 4.2 – API Level 17", and "CPU/ABI" to "Intel Atom (x86)". The Intel Atom x86 Image for Android Jelly Bean can make use of hardware GPU features to increase the performance of games, graphics-intensive programs, and user interface elements. For the best performance make sure to check the "Use Host GPU" Box when creating the image. Note: The functionality and performance of GPU acceleration is highly dependent on your computer’s graphics card and graphics drivers. GPU acceleration must be enabled on a per AVD basis.



Note: if the "Intel Atom (x86)" CPU/ABI option is not available, make sure that the system image is installed correctly. Click the "Create AVD" button. The AVD has been successfully created and is now ready to use:





Optimization

CPU Acceleration

The performance of the Intel Atom x86 Image for Android Jelly Bean can be improved with hardware-based virtualization using Intel VT-x technology.

If your computer has an Intel processor with VT-x support, it is recommended that Intel Hardware Acceleration Execution Manager (HAXM) be used in conjunction with this system image. For more information about Intel HAXM, visit http://www.intel.com/software/android.

Note: Intel HAXM is for Windows and OS X operating systems only. For Linux hosts, Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) can be used to accelerate emulation performance. For information on installing and configuring KVM on Ubuntu, refer to this guide: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KVM/Installation