Skip to main content

Devilering app optimized for your CPU

· 2 min read
Knight Hat
Knight Hat
Owner of Kreate

From 1.8.5 and onward, Kreate will be built and optimized for multiple CPU architecture.

What is this?​

This is the process of filtering out unecessarry code during the code build and only keep what the CPU can actually understand and

Why?​

Even though Kreate is wrriten in Kotlin, which is a high level language. Some of its dependencies are written partially in navtive code (C/C++).

Due to the nature of these languages, it must be written for a single architecture.

This means that a fucntion or a process must be rewritten as many time as existing architectures.

This creates unused code, because one's code can't be used by another. And the minification of R8 will usually ignore native code because they are already compiled. Which result in abundant storage to store unusable binaries.

With the new system, the build process will actively remove binaries that this architecture can't process.

The final result is a smaller APK file, and potentially, better optimized app.

How do I know which one to use?​

To obtain phone's abi, you need to look up the manufacturer and model with "CPU instruction". It'll give you more details on that.

There are 4 main intruction sets: armeabi-v7a, arm64-v8a, x86, and x86_64.

Once you get a hold of your phone's architect. Just download the matching file name to your phone and install it normally.

Here's the naming scheme: Kreate-<arch>.apk

tip

Assume your phone's instruction sets is: armeabi-v7a. Then you need to download Kreate-armeabi-v7a.apk

Can I continue using Kreate-release.apk?​

Yes, you can. Kreate is still being built for most architectures like before under the name of Kreate-release.apk. If you are unsure about your phone, just download this version and continue using it normally.