NVIDIA has been one of the big forces behind Android these past few years, providing the powerful processing technology for high-performance Android devices such as Google’s Project Tango, coming up with their own robust Android gaming tablet in the NVIDIA SHIELD Tablet, and recently venturing into the world of Android TV with the NVIDIA SHIELD TV console. That trend continues with NVIDIA now streamlining its game development for Android with a new tool suite called AndroidWorks.
Basically, AndroidWorks is an extension of NVIDIA’s GameWorks suite – a set of NVIDIA technologies and tools like PhysX, VisualFX, OptiX, and the NVIDIA Core SDK which allows developers to code for NVIDIA GPUs. With AndroidWorks, NVIDIA seems to be simplifying the process developing games on Android.
The suite includes libraries for developers to use, along with sample code. GameWorks also includes tools for profiling performance and debugging. And best of all, while AndroidWorks is based on NVIDIA’s existing Tegra Android Developer Pack, it will not be limited to being used on NVIDIA devices.
NVIDIA says it has tested AndroidWorks on other non-NVIDIA devices, like the ASUS Memopad and Google Nexus Player, as well as other ARM devices like the Nexus 7 and the Galaxy Tab S. So it looks like we’re going to be seeing more of NVIDIA in the Android world the next few years. Not necessarily a bad thing at all.
SOURCE: NVIDIA
