Episode 211: Rules about performance tools

In this episode Chet, Romain and Tor chat with Shai Barack about how the Android platform team studies performance and understands system health - and what is system health anyway? We talk about measuring performance, deciding trade-offs, and our favorite tools such as Perfetto, Compiler Explorer, and Android Studio's Memory Profiler.

Chapters:

Intro (00:00)

System health (0:27)

Efforts to make apps more efficient (3:35)

Telemetry data (5:59)

Trade offs between long battery life and good performance (8:21)

Scheduling groups (10:38)

Static drain (13:32)

Collaborating with App developers vs operating system (19:10)

High refresh rates (23:26)

Reach vs engagement (32:02)

What tools does your team use to optimize performance? (34:10)

Godbolt.org (37:09)

Demystifying (39:39)

The best tools are multi-player (43:52)

R8 or R-Not? (45:42)

Optimizing for feature sets (48:05)

Tools, not Rules (50:08)

What are the tools I should be aware of as an app developer looking to upscale performance? (54:36)

Allocation tracker (55:37)

Open source tools (57:08)

Useful resources for devs to understand various tools (59:04)

Final thoughts (1:06:19)

Links:

• Compiler Explorer → https://goo.gle/3Zbq6DV

• Perfetto → https://goo.gle/3OtD3UK and https://goo.gle/3B3S3p5

• Tools, not Rules → https://goo.gle/416CyY7

Shai:

Romain: @romainguy, threads.net/@romainguy, [e-mail]

Tor: threads.net/@tor.norbye and [e-mail]

Chet: @chethaase, threads.net/@chet.haase, and [e-mail]

Catch videos on YouTube → https://goo.gle/adb-podcast

Subscribe to Android Developers → https://goo.gle/AndroidDevs