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Fujitsu Announces XScale PDA
Andrew Slough writes: "Fujitsu has announced the world's first PDA based on Intel's XScale architecture, making this the fastest ARM PDA in the world! Stories also at at Infosync and The Register. Pictures at PocketNow."
Then you must not have read the post at pocketnow. It's got a lithium-polymer battery that lets it run for 14 hours.
Fujitsu's press release just said the chip was "high-performance", and after some digging I turned up this article which tells us that the Intel PXA250 can run at speeds as high as 400MHz. An excerpt:
Designed for advanced PDAs, the PXA250 is available at speeds of 200MHz, 300MHz, and 400MHz. While designed for low power, the PXA250 offers a Turbo Mode for application acceleration and multimedia acceleration with Intel Media Processing technology. USB, 920Kbps Bluetooth wireless, and a 1.84MHz baseband interface are offered as communication interfaces, and an enhanced memory support 2.5 volt or 3.3 volt 16-bit or 32-bit memory.
I feel so Dirty.
I'm a 2000 man.
The LOOX was announced weeks ago. Brighthand already had a forum up for it in February. Toshiba also announced their next PocketPC (XScale processor and embedded 802.11b included) last month.
A month behind the times? That's just shameful guys.
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While the core is very different to current "ARM" cores, the instruction set and patents are licensed from ARM. It runs ARM instructions natively. Saying it's not an ARM is like saying an Athlon isn't an x86 processor.
It's basically an ARM9 core with the pipeline extended a bit and a DSP MAC unit bolted on the side. This equates to slightly faster than StrongARM speeds (per MHz) on most code, and maybe double on DSP.
The Windows CE (Pocket PC) OS supports up to 640x480 standard, and I believe it could be custom linked to even larger res libraries if you have the platform builder. It also is not limited to the 16 bit (65535 color) screens currently popular with handheld makers, and can go up to 32 bit color easily. Hopefully more large res units will come out.
Erm no, you can't. With technology where it is today in terms of miniaturization, there is no "extra" space for a bigger screen. Have you ever taken apart an iPaq? There's not exactly a ton of room in there.
Most people want a PDA form factor that will either a) fit into a pants pocket or b) fit into a sport coat's pocket easily. There's just no room in devices of that size for a bigger screen right now.
The tech's only going to get better, though, and the Sony units that have a clamshell design are a step in the right direction. In the meantime, if you're dying for a bigger screen, just get a true palmtop like the Libretto that Toshiba used to put out. Several ocmpanies still make comparable units, and they all have nice big screens.
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Erm no, you can't. With technology where it is today in terms of miniaturization, there is no "extra" space for a bigger screen. Have you ever taken apart an iPaq? There's not exactly a ton of room in there.
Erm, yes. I'm not talking about putting an extra screen *inside* an iPAQ. When LCDs get bigger, they don't generally get deeper, they get longer and wider. An iPAQ with a bigger screen would be taller and wider, but only by a couple inches or so. Not everyone would want to carry around a PDA that's that big, but I'm better that there are others who would find it to be a suitable trade off for having a screen that's twice as big.
In the meantime, if you're dying for a bigger screen, just get a true palmtop like the Libretto that Toshiba used to put out.
I don't want a palmtop PC. I want a PDA, sans keyboard, that has a screen of a decent size to use HWR for taking notes. I still use my Newton, and will do so until I find a PDA with a screen that's big enough. I don't want to use some piddly little keyboard either, I've found HWR is faster.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
...that's gravy. It's strength is its power consumption.
The Xscale at 200Mhz will be using about 50mW, about the same as a Palm processor runs at now. Compare to the current StrongARM, which at 233Mhz (a slightly overclocked Ipaq) sucks down 900mw. The Xscale will be 15x or so less power-hungry than the StrongARM at 200.
Or in other words, for the same power you get 5.4 mips with a 33 MHz Palm vs. over 300 mips for a Xscale.
It also has an advantage as it "scales" what it needs depending on the app, hence the name. So if you are running a memopad type function, it will need less power, and if you are running Quake or something, it will go full-bore. Think of it as intelligent underclocking when needed.
So in summary, the Xscale can have the computing power of a current Ipaq (more actually, they tweaked the core), at the same power consumption as a Palm (or much less depending on what types of apps you run). At 400Mhz, it will use about 3x the power of a Palm processor, but this will still be 5-6x less power than the StrongARM running at half the speed.
Fwiw, the Newton 2000/2100 had a 480x320 16-shade greyscale screen. (What did the eMate have, the same?) Internally it ran at 8bit color as well (there were video out cards which took advantage of this).