Palm Ups Processing Power in Handhelds

Palm announced Tuesday plans to transition its handhelds to ARM-based processors, partnering with Intel, Motorola, and Texas Instruments. The three chip makers will license components of the Palm OS platform to create processors utilizing ARM technology, much improved over the current Dragonball core. Today's generation of Palm chips run at a speed of 33 MHz, while the new processors will be able to run at speeds up to 200 MHz, giving a boost to multimedia applications on the handhelds like audio and video playback.

Intel and Motorola will specifically work with Palm to optimize the OS for each company's ARM-based offerings. Adding support for Intel's StrongARM chips will be an important step in competing with more powerful PocketPC devices, which currently use the technology and offer superior multimedia capabilities. Palm also plans to make full use of the chip giant's XScale technology, set to debut late this year. Intel XScale processors will run at almost five times the speed of current handhelds.

Motorola will include its ARM core-based Dragonball MX1 processors into the mix as well, touting increased support for wireless and multimedia applications. Motorola powers today's Palm devices with a slower family of Dragonball chips.

In an effort to increase wireless support for Palm OS, Texas Instruments will offer its OMAP architecture to major Palm licensees. OMAP is an open platform aimed at delivering low power communication-based applications, and has played a vital role in the development of 2.5 and 3G wireless devices.

The licensing of Palm OS comes as part of the company's Palm OS Ready Program, intended to strengthen industry support for the handheld platform, already backed by Sony and Handspring. But with the current market crunch and development slowdown, faster Palm devices may not see the light of day until mid next year.