We are pleased to announce that the Android Microconference has been accepted into the 2021 Linux Plumbers Conference. The past Android microconferences have been centered around the idea that it was primarily a synchronization point between the Android kernel team and the rest of the community to inform them on what they have been doing. With the help of last year’s focus on the Generic Kernel Image[1] (GKI), this year’s Android microconference will instead be an opportunity to foster a higher level of collaboration between the Android and Linux kernel communities. Discussions will be centered on the goal of ensuring that both the Android and Linux development moves in a lockstep fashion going forward.

Last year’s meetup achieved the following:

• Forward progress on GKI, where vendors have started contributing their core kernel changes upstream, and moving their core functionality to modules.
• fw_devlink=on by default
• ION dropped from staging in favour of dma-buf heaps
• A couple of inline encryption patch series eMMC inline encryption support add support for inline encryption to device mapper
• Forward progress on dm-user
• Open development of the protected KVM project
• More details about last years achievements

This year’s topics to be discussed include:

• Alignment issues between Android and Cgroups v2: Issues in refactoring Android’s use of cgroups to utilize cgroups v2
• Thermal: Issues around performance and thermal handling between the kernel and Android’s HAL
• Fuse/device-mapper/other storage: Discuss out-of-tree dm/storage drivers and how they might go upstream or better align with upstream efforts
• In kernel memory tracking: Tracking/account GPU (and other multi-device shared) memory and how it might fit with cgroups
• fw_devlink: Remaining fw_devlink issues to resolve, now that its enabled by default.
• Hermetic builds/Kbuild
• GKI updates: Whats new this year in GKI and where its going next year
• Rust in AOSP / Kernel / Binder: How Android is adopting rust for userland and potentially for kernel drivers
• Android Automotive OS Reference Platform: Details on recent Android Automotive work
• Community devboard/device Collaboration: Ways to better collaborate on enabling various devboard against AOSP, without needing close interlock with Google

Come and join us in the discussion of making Android a better partner with Linux.

We hope to see you there.