NEON Support

The NDK supports the ARM Advanced SIMD, an optional instruction-set extension of the ARMv7 and ARMv8 spec. NEON provides a set of scalar/vector instructions and registers (shared with the FPU) comparable to MMX/SSE/3DNow! in the x86 world. To function, it requires VFPv3-D32 (32 hardware FPU 64-bit registers, instead of the minimum of 16).

The NDK supports the compilation of modules or even specific source files with support for NEON. As a result, a specific compiler flag enables the use of GCC ARM NEON intrinsics and VFPv3-D32 at the same time.

Not all ARMv7-based Android devices support NEON, but devices that do may benefit significantly from its support for scalar/vector instructions.

Using LOCAL_ARM_NEON

To have the NDK build all its source files with NEON support, include the following line in your module definition:

LOCAL_ARM_NEON := true

It can be especially useful to build all source files with NEON support if you want to build a static or shared library that specifically contains NEON code paths.

Using the .neon Suffix

When listing source files for your LOCAL_SRC_FILES variable, you have the option of using the .neon suffix to indicate that you want to build binaries with NEON support. For example, the following example builds one file with .neon support, and another without it:

LOCAL_SRC_FILES := foo.c.neon bar.c

You can combine the .neon suffix with the .arm suffix, which specifies the 32-bit ARM instruction set for non-NEON instructions. In such a definition, arm must come before neon. For example: foo.c.arm.neon works, but foo.c.neon.arm does not.

Build Requirements

NEON support works with the armeabi-v7a and arm64-v8a ABIs. If the NDK build scripts encounter other ABIs while attempting to build with NEON support, the NDK build scripts exit. It is important to use checks like the following in your Android.mk file:

# define a static library containing our NEON code
ifeq ($(TARGET_ARCH_ABI),armeabi-v7a)
include $(CLEAR_VARS)
LOCAL_MODULE    := mylib-neon
LOCAL_SRC_FILES := mylib-neon.c
LOCAL_ARM_NEON  := true
include $(BUILD_STATIC_LIBRARY)
endif # TARGET_ARCH_ABI == armeabi-v7a

Runtime Detection

Your app must perform runtime detection to confirm that NEON-capable machine code can be run on the target device. This is because not all ARMv7-based Android devices support NEON. The app can perform this check using the cpufeatures library that comes with this NDK.

You should explicitly check that android_getCpuFamily() returns ANDROID_CPU_FAMILY_ARM, and that android_getCpuFeatures() returns a value including the ANDROID_CPU_ARM_FEATURE_NEON flag set. For example:

#include <cpu-features.h>
...
...
if (android_getCpuFamily() == ANDROID_CPU_FAMILY_ARM &&
    (android_getCpuFeatures() & ANDROID_CPU_ARM_FEATURE_NEON) != 0)
{
    // use NEON-optimized routines
    ...
}
else
{
    // use non-NEON fallback routines instead
    ...
}

...

Cross-Platform Support for x86

NDK supports cross-platform compilation of your existing ARM SIMD (NEON) instrinsic functions into x86 SSE code, through the use of the third-party NEON_2_SSE.h file.

For more information on this topic, see From ARM NEON to Intel SSE– the automatic porting solution, tips and tricks.

Sample Code

The hello-neon sample provides an example of how to use the cpufeatures library and NEON intrinsics at the same time. This sample implements a tiny benchmark for a FIR filter loop using a C version, and a NEON-optimized one for devices that support it.