Learning AOSP Series - HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer)

Nanik Tolaram continues his series of talks on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP)

Topic

"Learning AOSP" - HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer)

Description

We all know that in order for hardware to run properly in your Android device it requires device drivers and most of those drivers are open source and available to be linked into the Linux kernel when building the kernel image, however, there are situations where vendors are not willing to share their proprietary technology or in other words their device drivers are not open. To overcome this issue Android has introduced an HAL which stands for Hardware Abstraction Layer, which allows proprietary drivers to be loaded as modules and can be used for your application. This presentation will talk about the HAL layer in more indepth and get an idea what is this HAL all about and what are the hardware that Android provides abstraction for.