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With each SDK, I have a solution of installing MIPS system image.

What is it? What does it do and when will someone use it? What will happen if I do not install it?

Sharath
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sandalone
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3 Answers3

86

What is it?

It is an emulator image that emulates a device that has a MIPS CPU, instead of an ARM or x86 CPU.

What does it do and when will someone use it?

You will use it if you wish to emulate a device that has a MIPS CPU, instead of an ARM or x86 CPU.

What will happen if I do not install it?

You will not be able to emulate a device that has a MIPS CPU, instead of an ARM or x86 CPU. The MIPS Consortium may cry. But, considering right now there are very few Android devices with MIPS CPUs on the market, not having a MIPS emulator is probably just fine.

More info on the MIPS architecture can be found here: http://www.mips.com/

Jeroen Baert
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CommonsWare
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    I got here via Google. While this answers the question, it doesn't add much useful information (user1364368's answer did). –  May 06 '13 at 18:59
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    @DavidIsNotHere: Two-thirds of that answer discusses x86, not MIPS, making it irrelevant for the question. The one point of relevance ("to test native code") I assumed was obvious, and that may have been a flawed assumption on my part. – CommonsWare May 06 '13 at 21:48
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According to my understanding you need the system images for MIPS and x86 only to test native code, which was developed using the "Native Development Kit" (NDK).

The x86-image can be executed with higher performance, if your CPU is offering virtualization support (e.g., Intel's VTx; AMD-V only for Linux), see this section in the official documentation. According to this discussion the emulator will write "HAX is working and emulator runs in fast virt mode" to the console if he uses the CPU's virtualization support.

However, if the emulator is running too fast, then the developer might forget that the app will also have to run with sufficient performance on a mobile device with limited resources ...

Community
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user1364368
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Strangely enough, updating MIPS System Image solved a build problem that I was having. After updating all components except for the MIPS System Image, all my projects failed to build with errors saying "R cannot be resolved to a variable". After updating MIPS System Image, everything builds well.

Ilya Kogan
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    Whoever downvoted this, wait till something like this happens to you. – Ilya Kogan Jun 22 '13 at 08:20
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    I did not downvote this, but I would like to say that a MIPS emulator could not have solved your problem exclusively. "R cannot be resolved to a variable" is due to your IDE (Eclipse) not auto-building, and means you should enable automatic compile in Project > Build Automatically. –  Jul 10 '13 at 18:51
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    @David The automatic build was definitely enabled all the time: before it stopped compiling, while there was a problem, and after the change. – Ilya Kogan Jul 12 '13 at 09:57
  • I also didn't downvote this, but my comment is: this answer is more like an off-topic comment (it's useful, but just not responsive to this question.) It might be better moved to its own question/answer. The question could explain the symptoms that you were experiencing, and your answer could explain how you fixed it. – Carl G Feb 03 '20 at 09:35