Last year in September, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) had launched an App Runtime for Chrome, popularized as ARC. It is a Google project which enables the apps meant for Android OS, to function on Chrome operation systems. A latest hack speculates that ARC actually enables these apps to run not just on Chrome, but also unofficially on every desktop edition of Chrome.
What does this mean? It implies that even though Google has not officially revealed about the complete potential of the ARC, but it can be worked up on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows as well as Chrome OS. Apart from iOS, ARC allowed the Android apps to function well on almost every platform.
ARC’s limited reach
Because ARC is said to be an infant beta version, therefore Google has restricted the reach of this project. Just a few applications are associated with ARC, and this is said to be a result of the relation between app developer and Google.
Google’s Big Steps
Now, Google has decided to walk two big steps in the forward direction. The company now allows any application developer to let their product function on ARC through the Chrome app packager. This, in turn, is enabling the ARC to function with the Chrome browser on any desktop computing platform.
ARC runs everywhere, thanks to NaCL
The reason ARC can run everywhere is because of the Native Client, also called NaCL. This is the sandboxing technology for Chrome which enables the Chrome apps as well as plug-ins to function at the close proximity speeds with native. This enables it to extract complete benefit of the GPU and CPU of the system. Chrome is transformed into a development platform with the help of NaCL. It is because of this reason that it can run on the entire desktop browsers of Chrome.
Google simply ported the entire bundle of Android to NaCL, which has allowed the Android apps to function on all known operating systems.
