Why Android Emulator with x86 system image is not running faster when it is executed on x86 system?

[SergeyKostrov]

First of all, Android Emulator with x86 system image is ~2.5 times faster than Android emulator
with ARM system image. My question is:

Why Android Emulator with x86 system image is not running faster when it is executed on x86 system?

My understanding is that it shouldn't emulate any instructions and it should work as a regular Win32 Java-application.

Note: Please don't recommend to install Intel HAXM. I know that it will speed up the Android Emulator...

[SergeyKostrov]

Quoting Sergey Kostrov

...
Why Android Emulator with x86 system image is not running faster when it is executed on x86 system?
...

I tried to increase a process priority to 'Above Normal' for the Android Emulator with x86 system image but it didn't help.

[Alexander_W_Intel · Accepted solution]

Sergey,

QEmu does always an emulation, even if the emulated device have the same architecture than the host.This is the case as long as you are not using Intel HAXM. It uses the hardware virtualization feature of the CPU to accelerate the emulation (or better said, to allow the code running without emulation)

Alex

[SergeyKostrov]

Here is an article from Google:

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/optimizing-for-3.0.html

and it has a tip on how to improve performance of the Android Emulator:

...
Tip: To improve the startup time for the emulator, enable snapshots for the AVD when you
create it with the AVD Manager (there's a checkbox in the AVD creator to Enable snapshots).
Then, start the AVD from the AVD manager and check Launch from snapshot and Save to snapshot.
This way, when you close the emulator, a snapshot of the AVD state is saved and used to
quickly relaunch the AVD next time. However, when you choose to save a snapshot, the emulator
will be slow to close, so you might want to disable Save to snapshot after you've acquired
an initial snapshot (after you close the AVD for the first time).
...