Google's new memory management upgrade: Here’s how it works

Google is giving Android a performance upgrade through which you could be able to make your videos better, play games smoothly, and run the apps more efficiently. This upgrade is all about memory management, and it's a significant step forward for the Android operating system.

What’s upgraded in Android?

Google is introducing support for 16KB page sizes in Android. Currently, Android only supports 4KB page sizes, after this upgrade your device would be able to allow it to support both 4KB and 16KB pages.

This means that Android would be running on hardware that uses either page size, making it more versatile and efficient.

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However, with the new upgrade, operating system of the Android devices will be able to handle memory more effectively, that would result in better performance and less lag. This means that videos will look better, games will play more smoothly, and apps would operate more efficiently.

How it works

In most Central Processing Units (CPUs), there's dedicated hardware called memory management units (MMUs) translate addresses from what a program is using to a physical location in memory.

This translation is done on a page-size basis. When the page size is larger, there's less bookkeeping involved, which means the system can spend more time making sure your videos look great, game runs well, and applications work smoothly.

According to Google, using larger page sizes can result in a 5-10% boost in overall performance. However, there's a trade-off - using larger page sizes also uses 9% more physical memory. But for most users, the benefits will far outweigh the costs.