How much processor power does the andoid SDK take?

Question

I am a total noob to this. I have literally just started today. I know Java and have developed in Eclipse forever - I am just new to Android. So, I downloaded the SDK and ADT plugin. I even coded the Hello Android app with a simple textview and got it going. What I am surprised at is the amount of RAM and processing power that eclipse is hogging on 2 occasions:

1. when running the AVD wizard
2. when running the emulator

In the first instance, eclipse just froze and ran out of heap space. I had to restart with a much higher -Xmx setting to let that thing run through. On 2) even when the emulator is just sitting and doing nothing, its taking up about 13% cpu power constantly. Even as I write, this, my emulator is running in the background and the windows task manager shows emulator.exe taking 13%. This is on my Core i7 laptop. So, I am pretty sure on my regular Core 2 computer, this thing will easily take upwards of 40% cpu.

So that leads me to suspect: Have I done everything right? Is it like this for everyone?

Answer 1

No problems here, except of course the emulator is slow: its an emulator!! They are slow :)

C2D 2,2Ghz, 2GB RAM. I use eclipse all day though so my heap is already maxed upp because of projects with 10000+ files.

Answer 2

I had the same problem. Apparently Eclipse+ADT has a problem with the JVM feature UseGCOverheadLimit (see http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/hotspot/gc/gc_tuning_6.html#par_gc.oom). You can try to run eclipse with the following vmargs: eclipse.exe -vmargs -XX:-UseGCOverheadLimit -Xmx1024M