Introduction
Initially, Intel GPA was created for developers targeting PC games running the Windows* OS. Many of the top-selling games utilized Intel GPA when analyzing and optimizing their games running on the Windows platform.
For Windows workloads, developers can run one of three tools: Intel GPA System Analyzer (both HUD and Remote), Intel GPA Frame Analyzer, and Intel GPA Platform Analyzer. Each of these tools helps customers quickly pinpoint performance issues with a different aspect of their graphics application, such as whether the game is CPU-bound or GPU-bound, or what portions of the rendering pipeline are responsible for performance bottlenecks within a specific frame.
But with the rapid rise of Android* game development, Intel GPA System Analyzer also supports game analysis for Intel Atom processor-based phones running the Android operating system. With this capability, Android developers get a real-time view of over two dozen critical system metrics covering the CPU, GPU, and OpenGL-ES* API. In addition, the tool provides a number of graphics pipeline experiments that help developers quickly isolate graphics bottlenecks. And in keeping with the flexible nature of Android development, Intel GPA System Analyzer runs on three different development platforms: Windows OS, Apple OS X*, and Linux* Ubuntu*.
You can download the various versions of the product from the Intel GPA Home Page.
The rest of this article provides more information about Intel GPA's support of the Android platform, and provides guidance on which version of the product you should download and install.
Versions of Intel GPA
Intel GPA's architecture is quite adaptable, and is based upon communication via sockets between the target system (where your game runs) and the analysis system (where you run the Intel GPA tools). Because of this extensible architecture, the product supports the analysis of both Windows* OS platforms as well as mobile platforms -- you can analyze games on Intel® Atom™ phones running the Android* OS from a variety of development systems: OS X, Ubuntu, and Microsoft Windows.
Here is a chart showing the different platforms supported by Intel GPA, and some tips on installation of the product:
| Target Platform (where your game runs) | Analysis Platform (your development system) | Installation Information |
| Microsoft* Windows* 7/8/8.1 OS | Microsoft* Windows* 7/8/8.1 OS | Install the software on both the Target Platform and the Analysis Platform |
| Google* Android* 2.3, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 (Intel® Atom™ phones) | OS X* 10.7, 10.8 Microsoft* Windows* 7/8 OS Ubuntu* OS 11.10, 12.04 | Install the software only on the Analysis Platform |
A couple of notes regarding the table above:
- All versions of the product are available from the Intel GPA Home Page -- click the Download button on the page to see a popup dialog box which includes download links for the different platforms.
- For the Windows* OS target platform, all Intel GPA tools can run on both the target platform and the analysis platform (that is, Intel GPA System Analyzer HUD, Intel GPA System Analyzer (client/server mode), Intel GPA Frame Analyzer, and Intel GPA Platform Analyzer). For the Android* OS target platform, only the Intel GPA System Analyzer (client/server mode) runs on the target platform.
- For the Microsoft* Windows* 8 OS, Intel GPA does not support the RT version of this OS.
- For more information about Intel GPA on the Android* OS platform, either read this article or see the Android* section of the Intel GPA Online Help.