Summary

This chapter introduced RenderScript, an advanced technology to parallelize intensive computation tasks. More specifically, we saw how to use predefined RenderScript built-in Intrinsics, which are currently mainly dedicated to image processing. We also discovered how to implement our own Kernels with the RenderScript custom language inspired by C. Finally, we saw an example of an Intrinsics and Kernels combination to perform computations that are more complex.

RenderScript is available from either the Java or the native side. However, let's be clear, apart from the exception of Allocations backed by memory buffers (a rather important feature for performance though), RenderScript is still more useable through its Java API. Grouping is not available, struct is not reflected yet, and some other features are still buggy (for example YUV Intrinsics).

Indeed, RenderScript aims at giving tremendous computing power to the developers who neither have the time nor the knowledge to follow...