[my123]

Hello,

> The HLOS (High-level OS) running on the Hexagon requires every "applet" to be signed by either the Qualcomm root cert or the OEMs cert

That's no longer true since quite some years now :) See the Unsigned PDs, which are allowed for general purpose compute since at least sm8150 (Snapdragon 855).

Note that the articles you mention says this about it:

> Signature-free dynamic shared objects are run inside an Unsigned PD, which is the user PD limited in its access to underlying DSP drivers and thread priorities. An Unsigned PD is designed to support only general computing applications.

[mirsadm]

I spent way too much time trying to make use of it with Halide and was not successful. Are you saying that this is now possible? I am the developer an app which would greatly benefit from it.

[my123]

Yes. Note however that the Pixel line shipped with Hexagon access restricted for non-platform Android apps however. But on other devices, things should just work.

[brutus1213]

This whole approach makes little sense for a developer (not to mention a user). When a consumer buys a phone at particular price point, they expect it to offer some level of performance. Now if devs can offload to these accelerators on a tiny subset of devices in the market, it will by definition lead to a fragmented user experience (and a ton more dev work). Why bother?

I am becoming convinced that CPU (and maybe GPU) is the only viable accelerator on Android devices. All these fancy accelerators are just for phone makers to do their own thing (mainly camera crap). Might as well make it part of the ISP.

Also, I fear Apple is going to eat Android's lunch at this rate :(