With the release of Android Studio 3.0 Beta release, the android studio provides next-generation dex compiler, D8 to compile code and build android APK. Currently, D8 is available for preview.
Check more details: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/08/next-generation-dex-compiler-now-in.html
How to enable build using D8 in android studio?
R8, is available for preview as part of Android Studio 3.0 Beta
To try it, set the following in your project's gradle.properties file:
android.enableR8=true
R8 also has full mode that is not directly compatible with Proguard. In order to try that out you can additionally set the following in your gradle.properties file:
android.enableR8.fullMode=true
You can check this blog for further details
As others mentioned, you can enable D8 via android.enableD8=true in your gradle.properties but in case you encountered compile error as such "Process 'command 'xxx/bin/java'' finished with non-zero exit value 1" on a project migrated/imported into the new Android Studios 3.1+ , then try with this:
android.enableD8.desugaring=true
This will execute desugaring as part of D8 which speeds up the process.