Now that we have Honeycomb, what is RenderScript?

Question

So Android 3.0 (honeycomb) is out now and boasts some kind of new hardware-accelerated 3D graphics engine called Renderscript.

Renderscript 3D graphics engine

Renderscript is a runtime 3D framework that provides both an API for building 3D scenes as well as a special, platform-independent shader language for maximum performance. Using Renderscript, you can accelerate graphics operations and data processing. Renderscript is an ideal way to create high-performance 3D effects for applications, wallpapers, carousels, and more.

And according to this blog post dating back from 2009, this graphics engine could already be found used in a class named Fountain (even before honeycomb). This last clue was helpful to me, because now I can easily find that class name in the Honeycomb code.

Can any of you supply any more insights into Renderscript? and ways to learn more about how to use it? Now that this has become a public api, I'm assuming that the people in-the-know may be able to get the permission to freely talk about it (I hope).

Answer 1

Have you downloaded the Honeycomb SDK via the android tool? It downloads documentation, including the javadoc pages for Renderscript.

Answer 2

RenderScript is several things: - A language, similar to C99 with extra advanced features. It's pre-compiled on the host and re-compiled on the device, to achieve best performance. - A rendering library (you can draw textured meshes, etc.) - A compute library (to run heavy computations in RenderScript which can then be offloaded to the GPU, several CPUs or DSPs.)