A Motorola Dragonball in your Pocket PC?

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/18/020918hndragonball.xml?s=IDGNS">http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/09/18/020918hndragonball.xml?s=IDGNS</a><br /><br />The Dragonball processor has been the sole CPU for Palm PDAs since inception. The new Dragonball MX1 is not the same old processor though. It is an ARM920T based processor and has recently been certified to run Microsoft's Windows CE operating system.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hansberry/2002/20020918-motorola.gif" /><br /><br />"The announcement makes Motorola the third major vendor to make chips for the handheld device market that can run Windows CE or components of it, said Scott Horn, director of marketing for the embedded and appliance platforms group at Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash." Third? CE supports MIPS, SHx, ARM and x86. What am I missing in that comment?<br /><br />"Motorola will make an application development system available for Windows CE 3.0 on Wednesday. Support for the latest version, Windows CE .Net, will come by the end of 2002, it said in the release. Microsoft's Pocket PC and SmartPhone 2002 operating systems currently use source code from Windows CE 3.0, and as those products move toward the latest version, Motorola's processor will move with them, Horn said." It clearly looks like this is targeted at two platforms - Smartphones and Pocket PCs. Sheds a bit of light on the "third processor" comment too. First for these devices was Intel with the StrongARM. The HP Jornada 928 runs on the TI OMAP ARM processor. Still, I think there are others being used in Smartphone 2002 devices. There is additional information in <a href="http://news.com.com/2100-1001-958325.html?tag=fd_top">this CNet article</a>.

[michael]

Doesn't the HP just use the TI chip for the phone functionality? I seem to remember hearing that it was a "dual-proc" system, StrongARM for the PDA, but the phone was TI.

It'd be good if there was another choice of CPU though, it can only bring the prices down and lets face it, if Palm are using it then lots will be sold and the chip should become quite cheap quite quickly!

[Ed Hansberry]

http://www.hp-expo.com/uk/eng/products/jornada/jornada928.asp

Pure TI.

[/dev/niall]

Third? CE supports MIPS, SHx, ARM and x86. What am I missing in that comment?


Perhaps they are counting StrongARM as a purely Intel product? Hitachi (http://semiconductor.hitachi.com/index.html), MIPS (http://www.mips.com/windowsCE/index.html), and Intel (http://www.intel.com/products/browse/processor.htm), leaving out ARM (http://www.arm.com/armtech/CPUs?OpenDocument).

[michael]

http://www.hp-expo.com/uk/eng/products/jornada/jornada928.asp

Pure TI.

So it is. Hmmm, oh well :)

[molen]

http://www.managementinternational.biz/images/New_Motorola_Phones_2003.htm

Too bad they don't use a Windows O/S :(

[michael]

http://www.managementinternational.biz/images/New_Motorola_Phones_2003.htm

Too bad they don't use a Windows O/S :(

Yeah, but at least one can play WMA :D

[Lotto]

Hmm... I need some rest...I know I read your subject right, but my head heard....."Is that a dragon in your pocket...?" :oops:

[JMountford]

I posted that Motorola was working on Arm Processors at least six months ago. I think almost a year ago. Samsung is also working on Arm Processors.

[Ed Hansberry]

I posted that Motorola was working on Arm Processors at least six months ago. I think almost a year ago. Samsung is also working on Arm Processors.
Well known. MOT was the first ARM approved for Palm OS5. This just gets them CE certification. :-)