Following the recent announcement of the Android L Developer Preview supporting the 64-bit ARMv8-A architecture, ARM will release a mini-computer that could speed up the development of applications for 64-bit Android L smartphones and tablets. The reference board will work with a 64-bit Android edition (Linaro 14.06 release) developed by open-source development group Linaro.

The Linaro ARMv8-A reference software stack combined with the ARM Development Platform (ADP) provides the ARM ecosystem with a foundation to accelerate 64-bit Android availability on silicon.

"The ARM ecosystem is rapidly preparing for the benefits a 64-bit ARM architecture will bring to devices starting this year," said James McNiven, general manager of systems and software at ARM. "Our collaboration with Linaro will enable our partners to create devices that will drive the best next-generation mobile experience on 64-bit Android operating systems, while also providing full compatibility with today's 32-bit mobile ecosystem that is optimized on ARM-v7A."

The Linaro 14.06 release includes a 64-bit primary/32-bit secondary binary image and source code based on the Linaro Stable Kernel (LSK) 3.10 for Android, compiled with GCC 4.9 and tested on both the ARMv8-A 64-bit hardware platform and ARMv8-A Fast Models. The AOSP is based on the Open Master snapshot downloaded on June 1st with HDMI drivers loaded as modules. The release is built with the Android real-time (ART) compiler as the default virtual machine with the same source supporting both 32- and 64-bit user spaces on hardware and virtual platforms. Peripheral and power management support plus several accelerations will not be available in this release, but will follow in future releases on a monthly cadence.

The ARMv8-A hardware development platform includes an SoC with a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU and dual-core ARM Cortex-A57 CPU in an ARM big.LITTLE processing configuration with a quad-core ARM Mali-T624 GPU linked via ARM CoreLink system IP and implemented using ARM Artisan physical IP.