The Android ION Memory Manager

Lately there's been quite a bit of discussions about Android "ION". What exactly is ION? Is it just some fancy name or is there more to it?
Let's talk about some history of Android first.
Since the very beginning, vendors of Android devices like , or all use different System on a Chip (SoC) solutions from Qualcomm (MSM/Snapdragon), Nvidia (Tegra) and TI (OMAP).ch SoC has its own kernel drivers for managing memory buffers (chunks of scratcad memory) used by Graphic Processing Unit (GPU), Audio processing, and Camera Stills and processing.
Every vendor had their own version of memory management, such as PMEM for Qualcomm, NVMAP for Nvidia and CMEM for TI - private memory not shared with anyone else.ch Android graphics, audio and camera libraries had to be customized to work with ch of the SoC's own flavour of memory management, which makes it a nightmare for the Android Maintainers to maintain the fragmentation and compatibility issues abound.However, this was the case for all pre-Ice Crm Sandwich OS like Froyo, Gingerbrd or even Honeycomb.
For Android 4.0 (aka Ice Crm Sandwich), Google was finally fed up with the private memory manager structure and decreed that all newer devices with Android 4.0 native should use the new, so called "ION" memory manager.
So what is exactly the Android ION?
In a simple words, Android ION removes ARMspecifiependencies.The ION memory manager provides a common structure for how memory will be managed and used by GPU, Audio and Camera drivers.Common functions are:

memory alloion / de-alloionDirect Memory Access Poolsuser-space (Android libraries) memory passing to/from kernel space
With these common functions and structures defined, kernel drivers from ch SoC manufacturer needed to rewrite their drivers to be compatible with Ice Crm Sandwich.Once the drivers adopted to the new common structure, the graphics, audio and camera libraries can now be more eric and could care less about the nitty-gritty details of how different SoC vendors' drivers worked.
It was painful at first, but it was a necessary move for Google to impose to all the SoC vendors.Now looking back, this new ION manager enabled manufactures and third party Android projects (likeCyano-mod) to quickly bring up newer Android relses for various devices and also reduce the "hidden" Android fragmentation.
If you want to take a look at the of the ION memory manager, plse visit faux123 github - MSM ION
I hope you enjoyed my first Kernel GeekTalk series... more to come soon!
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