PDA Makers Plan on Intel's XScale

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,83923,tk,dn021302X,00.asp">http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,83923,tk,dn021302X,00.asp</a><br /><br />Everywhere I look there's XScale - it's a beautiful thing! Moreso than the speed increases, I'm looking forward to some battery savings, however slight they might be (the screen is the big power draw).<br /><br />"Just two days after the launch of its XScale processor, Intel has already picked up endorsements for its new mobile chip from three Japanese manufacturers of PDAs...One of the first companies expected to show an XScale-based processor is Fujitsu Siemens Computer, a German-based unit of Fujitsu. The company has announced plans to show a new PDA, the Pocket Loox, at the Cebit trade show, which begins in Germany on March 13...<br /><br />While that PDA has been developed in Europe and will be targeted at the European market, Fujitsu in Japan also has plans to produce an XScale PDA, according to a spokesperson in Tokyo. Toshiba says it plans to launch a similar product. Expected to be available in the U.S. in the second quarter of this year, the company's machine will be based on a 400-MHz version of the new chip and pack built-in wireless functions and dual expansion slots, the company says in a statement."<br /><br />The article goes on to say that Casio will also be launching an XScale product, and Hitachi will likely be announcing their PDA plans next week.

[st63z]

Oh, man, so it's already known that the other PPC manufacturers (including the US companies) won't have XScale models anytime soon? So in the US the only 400MHz XScale on the foreseeable horizon is the Toshiba?

I wonder what time frames Hitachi and Casio will announce. Also, why is Fujitsu Japan wasting resources developing their own in parallel to the German arm? And why only 300MHz for the Loox?

Anyways, I suppose it being Toshiba kinda makes sense. Their e570 has been a very limited rollout only to the enterprise, so I guess their manufacturing/marketing cycle was in a good position to quickly capitalize on a new XScale model, whereas this isn't the case with many of the others... Anyone know what wireless capability this XScale Toshiba will have (someone had said it'd probably just have Bluetooth instead of integrated 2.5/3G)?


I wonder if Hitachi has been working on XScale all along since the beginning, or if they missed the early lead window and have been working on SA-1110 instead. NEC in particular looks kinda bad with their MobilePro P300 time table, it's not even here yet and it's already looking worse and worse...

[OzBert]

Btw., it is Fujitsu-Siemens, a joint-venture-merger between, you guessed it, Fujitsu and Siemens - not just a German Fujitsu division...

They are a seperate entity of Fujitsu Japan, and the largest PC vendor in Europe (mostly enterprise customers).

OzBert

[Gen-M]

See this thread http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=164

[Daniel]

One of the great things about the XScale is that it is compatible with the StrongARM (actually the ARM instruction set) meaning that it shouldn't be *too* difficult for manufacturers to implement. The other cool thing is that it allows for PPC manufacturers to have different versions, like a budget version that is slower without changing very much.
The actual architecture should scale upt to 1gHz too, which means that maybe in a few months Times2Tech could be offering differnt kinds of upgrades?

That would be cool! :)

Daniel