Palm Memory Maximum Increased

Trillan writes "PalmSource has announced that it has developed a technology for increasing the maximum RAM on a Palm handheld from 16MB to 128MB. Hopefully new devices will come out soon to take advantage of it." This looks to me like Palm's plan for remaining competitive against handhelds like Sony's that can add more memory in via memory stick. As more and more multimedia apps are written for PalmOS, more storage space only makes sense.

Comments

Re:Oops... by any chance

[blancolioni]

BTW, a Palmtop with 128MB RAM should be quite fast - like say, aLinux desktop with 1GB RAM..

Yes, there should be a significant speed boost, just like when you paint a red stripe on your car.

Gee, how innovative

[EmagGeek]

... to add 3 address bits to the Memory bus. wow, that must have been hard...

When sales slump a little more, and their market research indicates people want more RAM, maybe they'll add another address bit.

When are people going to realize that technological innovation ISN'T. Intellectual Property law has completely ended innovation. All we can do is expand, complicate, and repackage, the same damn IP that we invented 10 years ago because we're not allowed to innovate anymore. Even if we could, it wouldn't be worth it because we'd just get sued by some jackass that thinks he invented it first and the lawyers would bleed us dry..

i'll invest when

[tooninja]

. Handheld Linux OS + Phone + GPS + Camera + Multimedia Capabilities + Wireless + a frickin' laser = a single device (Flip phone size) ... (okay maybe the laser could be an add on) ... but hopefully within 5 years....

It's for competitiveness against PocketPC

[fer]

This looks to me like Palm's plan for remaining competitive against handhelds like Sony's that can add more memory in via memory stick.

Palmsource is responsible for the PalmOS which is used by both Sony *and* Palm devices. It has nothing to do with flash memory (which is used by both hardware brands).

With this development, all Palmsource licensees including Sony and Palm can use up to 128MB internal memory to remain competitive with PocketPC devices.

Palm already competing with Memory Stick

[Anonymous Coward]

This looks to me like Palm's plan for remaining competitive against handhelds like Sony's that can add more memory in via memory stick.

If that's their plan, then they're doing quite well, since 7 (out of 9) of Palm's current models and at least one of the older models all have an SD Card slot. Some links for more info:

• The Palm product family -- look at the "Expansion Cards" row.
• And a list of expansion cards that are available from Palm. (You can use generic SD Cards from other manufacturers too, of course.)

However, as you might be aware from having used Flash in other circumstances, regular RAM is waaaaaaaay faster than Flash, so breaking the 16MB RAM barrier is a Good Thing(tm).

On a completely different note, why doesn't Slashdot allow me to use HTML entites, so that I could write ™ and get a REAL trademark symbol? Is it that hard? It seems like actually extra work to filter them out!

Re:well

[dattaway]

more ram = more room for bloat

Not to mention battery life going from weeks to hours.

I have a HP-28S that will go for a year without a change of batteries. Real shame that handhelds need a power grid nearby these days.

Close, but note quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the Palm, there are essentially four kinds of storage:

1. There's the system ROM. The system boots from this. It stores the whole operating system. It's actually flash, but then what isn't these days? Except in rare circumstances, the Flash is never updated. The one exception is that you might once or twice during the life of the system do a major OS upgrade by rewriting the whole system ROM. The system ROM is CPU-addressable memory, meaning it can issue load instructions against it. (Or actually on 68k, they're "move" instructions...)
2. The dynamically allocated memory that's available to applications. This resides in RAM, of course. I'm lumping the stack, the heap, global variables, etc. together here. Also directly CPU-addressable, otherwise how would you have variables in your program? :-)
3. The "databases". The Palm doesn't have files, or actually it does, but it doesn't use them for much and they are an afterthought. Instead, everything is in a "database". This is taken so far that even applications are databases. Their records contain code and other resources they need to run (GUI objects, bitmaps, etc.). Also, the user data is all in databases. Your phone list is a database, your datebook is another, etc., etc. These databases are, for the most part, surprisingly stored on the very same RAM chips as the dynamic data that programs use. Interestingly, the Palm has hardware write protection for this data, though, so even though it runs the good old 68000 instruction set, which is too old to support memory protection in the modern sense, you're still protected if a program goes haywire. It can't accidentally write over your phone list. In order to modify a database, you must go through an API call. Also of interest is the fact that, because important data (applications, all your phone numbers, etc.) is stored in this portion of RAM, when you reboot the Palm, the RAM is not erased. Or at least not that part of it. (Unless you do a cold boot.) So, yes, strange as it may seem, all your important data is stored in plain old RAM for months or years on end.
4. Some Palm models also have removeable flash media. These are much more like a traditional filesystem, with files, directory names, etc. In fact, they are a normal filesystem -- they're good old (!?) FAT. Palm doesn't really have great support for these devices, in that everything for years and years has all been designed to work with databases instead, so the idea of real files is a foreign concept, and most apps can't access them. Of course, there is a complete API for accessing filesystems on the flash if you want to build an application that calls it. Also, the OS does allow you to store read-only databases on the Flash, which means you can store applications there. (Remember, applications are stored in databases. In Palm terminology, a PRC is sort of just a special case of a PDB.)

So, to sum things up, yes, programs are run straight from storage memory, but storage memory happens to be RAM, although the operating system goes to a lot of trouble to mentally keep that RAM separate from the "regular" RAM (used in the traditional way), which is important because all that RAM is really coming from the same pool.

Memorysticks aren't RAM.

[wfberg]

Sony Clie handhelds run the PalmOS. The memorysticks are used for storage, not RAM, as PalmOS can't use that much memory for RAM. Which is part of the reason why they're extending PalmOS.

Re:Erm...

[Anonymous Coward]

On the Palm, apparently the really early models (like the Palm Professional I've had since 1997) actually used static RAM, but newer ones use dynamic RAM. On models that use AAA batteries, there is a circuit that steps up the voltage and a pretty powerful capacitor too, so that when you take out the batteries, your memory contents will stay around for quite some time. (An hour, last I tried it.) Apparently, because of the step-up circuit, the capacitor can be kept fully charged even when your (2 x AAA) battery voltage is waaaay down. So, the Palm devices make a valiant effort at keeping power going to the RAM.

I think static RAM was a good choice initially, because the Palm's CPU is actually running only a very small amount of the time. Even when the display is on, the device is in a power-saving mode called "doze" mode until you press a button or something. After a few minutes of inactivity, it goes into a different mode called "sleep" mode, in which current draw goes down even more. So, really, the percentage of the time that the processor is running is really quite small.

I want a PDA, not a laptop

[mousse-man]

Different devices for different needs. I still have an old (or better: now antique) Palm IIIc for my PDA needs. It does everything perfectly. I can download mail, I can even browse the web in a limited way, I have my phone numbers and even a game or two, and some ebooks to read. I want that device to be usable when I'm away from the grid. For a whole day. To effectively work with a keyboard, type this article, do some scripting and java programming, I have a notebook with all possible gadgets and softwares that will fit on a 40 GB disk (with Linux, as we know, an "awful lot" (c) by mousse-man 2003). I can watch multimedia stuff on it, can use Mozilla and other memory hogs, and I have a second battery in the DVD-ROM bay when I'm away from the grid, giving me approx 4.5 hours of work time. That's why I keep my old Palm and haven't bought a Sharp Zaurus - it won't work more than 3 or four hours at a time without recharging. Just one advantage the Zaurus has is all that fancy free software. If somebody makes a Zaurus that lives on little power, a smaller footprint than the current model, I might be tempted to test it since I'm a bit of a Linux zealot... :) Getting a Palm to have more than 8 MB of RAM won't have any benefit for me as I don't even use 6 MB. And I use my palm as calendar, address book, and a for a few other applications and references.

POSIX/Linux is *NOT* the answer.

[fmaxwell]

Both Palm and Microsoft love churning out these messed up, non-standard APIs because it ties programmers to them and creates a market niche. The messier the API, the better, as long as a company has a captive developer population.

Palm's API is clean, intelligent, and well-designed for its intended purpose (a PDA). The tools to develop for it are readily available and it's a very good interface.

From a purely technical point of view, both systems should be relegated to the dustbin of history and replaced with a decent POSIX-compatible kernel (Linux, QNX, whatever).

This is the kind of Linux-on-everything idiocy that makes my head hurt. Linux is great for some things and complete crap for others. A POSIX-compatible kernel is completely inappropriate for a Palm-style handheld. Have you ever tried to write a GUI-based Othello program that's 15K long on Linux? How about a 47K full scientific calculator? And those are big programs compared to many PalmOS apps.

It's that I-have-a-hammer-so-every-solution-involves-a-nail kind of thinking that has ruined many embedded systems. The PalmOS devices continue to be successful because they don't try to cram some variant of Unix or Windows in them and, instead, stick to an OS that is appropriate. As a result, the devices meet users' needs for speed, storage, and battery life. If you Linux pushers had your way, PalmOS handhelds would need faster CPUs, far more RAM, and would drain batteries so fast that Rayovac shares would jump up 50%.

Announcement is Significant

[Coppit]

This announcement that Palm OS 5.2.1 can handle more memory comes just before the new Palm Tungsten C is rumored to be released. The T|C is supposed to have 64MB of memory and run--you guessed it--OS 5.2.1.

Here is the original leak, and here is one for sale on Ebay. The thing is supposed to retail for $499 on the 25th, but some dumbass is willing to pay an extra $300 to get it a couple days earlier. Anyway, Quill Corp, Amazon, and Staples all jumped the gun with listings for the product but have since removed them.

I for one am going to snap one up on Wednesday. It's got a hi-res color display, 64MB of RAM, a thumbboard (which I like), a 400MHz Intel XScale chip, no exterior antenna, and best of all... 802.11b. (No, damn it, I don't want to pay a stupid monthly bill for your wireless service when I can get it just about anywhere I work away from the office.)