Android Emulator AMD Processor Hyper-V Support
Article Summary
Jamal Eason from Google just opened up hardware-accelerated Android emulation to thousands of developers who were stuck with slow software emulation. If you've been running AMD processors or Hyper-V, this changes everything.
Google's Android Emulator team announced support for AMD processors and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor on Windows 10. This update addresses two of the most requested features from the Android developer community, previously limited to Intel processors with HAXM.
Key Takeaways
- Android Emulator now 2x more deployed than physical devices in Android Studio
- AMD Ryzen processors now get hardware acceleration via Windows Hypervisor Platform API
- Hyper-V users can run emulator alongside other virtualized apps on Windows 10
- Quick boot and snapshots load emulator sessions in under 2 seconds
- Linux and macOS users get new snapshots UI with performance improvements
Hardware-accelerated Android emulation is now available to AMD processor users and Hyper-V environments, ending the software emulation bottleneck for a major segment of Windows developers.
About This Article
Android developers using AMD processors on Windows couldn't access hardware acceleration. They were stuck with slow software emulation while Intel HAXM users got 2x faster performance from quick boot and snapshot features.
Google used Microsoft's Windows Hypervisor Platform API and open-source work to bring x86 Android Virtual Devices to AMD systems. Android Studio 3.2 Beta and Android Emulator v27.3.8+ provided the needed support.
AMD Ryzen users now get hardware-accelerated emulation that matches Intel system performance. Hyper-V users on Windows 10 Professional, Education, or Enterprise can run the Android Emulator alongside other virtual applications.