Hardware buffer handling in Android is about sharing large chunks of memory (usually image or video data) efficiently between components, often across processes, without copying. This is critical for performance-sensitive pipelines like Camera → GPU → ML → Display.
🧠 What is a Hardware Buffer?
A hardware buffer is a block of memory that can be:
Allocated by the system
Backed by GPU / DMA-capable memory
Shared across processes
Accessed by CPU, GPU, Media codecs, Camera HAL
In Android, this is exposed via AHardwareBuffer (NDK) and wrapped at higher levels by APIs like HardwareBuffer, ImageReader, Surface, etc.
🔍 How Hardware Buffers Work in Android
1️⃣ Allocation: Where the Hardware Buffer Comes From => A hardware buffer is allocated by the Graphics Allocator (gralloc).
