Why are there so many floats in the Android API?

Question

The default floating point type in Java is the double. If you hard code a constant like 2.5 into your program, Java makes it a double automatically. When you do an operation on floats or ints that could potentially benefit from more precision, the type is 'promoted' to a double.

But in the Android API, everything seems to be a float from sound volumes to rectangle coordinates. There's a structure called RectF used in most drawing; the F is for float. It's really a pain for programmers who are casting promoted doubles back to (float) pretty often. Don't we all agree that Java code is messy and verbose enough as it is?

Usually math coprocessors and accelerators prefer double in Java because it corresponds to one of the internal types. Is there something about Android's Dalvik VM that prefers floats for some reason? Or are all the floats just a result of perversion in API design?

Answer 1

On devices without an FPU, the single-precision floating point ops are much faster than the double-precision equivalents. Because of this, the Android framework provides a FloatMath class that replicates some java.lang.Math functions, but with float arguments instead of double.

On recent Android devices with an FPU, the time required for single- and double-precision operations is about the same, and is significantly faster than the software implementation. (The "Designing for Performance" page was written for the G1, and needs to be updated to reflect various changes.)

Incidentally, writing "2.5f" or "(float) 2.5" doesn't matter. Either way, javac knows you want a single-precision float constant, and that's what it generates. You can verify this by writing a sample program and examining the bytecode generated.

Answer 2

Depending on the CPU there will be no Floating Point Unit (FPU). So it has to emulate the FPU in Software. this is faster for a Float than for a Double. Or if the Device has a FPU it will be probably also be faster with Floats.