Android Native Development Kit (NDK)
The Android Native Development Kit (NDK) is a set of tools that allows Android application developers to implement parts of their apps using native-code languages like C and C++. It enables the use of existing C/C++ code libraries, provides access to low-level hardware features, and can improve…
Key facts
- First appeared
- 2007
- Category
- technology
- Problem solved
- The Android NDK was created to solve the problem of performance limitations inherent in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) for certain types of applications, the inability to reuse existing C/C++ codebases, and the lack of direct, low-level access to hardware resources on Android devices.
- Platforms
- Linux (host), Android (target - ARM, ARM64, x86, x86_64), macOS (host), Windows (host)
Related technologies
Notable users
- Multimedia companies (e.g., Spotify, Netflix - for codecs, processing)
- Machine Learning developers (for inference engines like TensorFlow Lite)
- High-performance computing companies
- Google (for Android OS components and apps)
- Gaming studios (e.g., Epic Games, Unity Technologies - for game engines)