According to Microsoft's Suwanjindar, the lack of improvement in performance can be attributed to Pocket PC not being optimised for the new processors. The new Pocket PC-based devices from Toshiba and HP, which range in price from $599 to $750, use Intel's 400MHz XScale PXA250 processors. The chips are based on the fifth version of the ARM processor instruction set, ARM V5. The new Pocket PC-based devices do feature new capabilities that were not built into previous handhelds. Toshiba's e740 Pocket PC handheld incorporates 802.11b wireless networking, which lets device owners share files and resources with a PC or computer network. The HP iPaq 3970 comes with remote-control technology that lets devices control up to 20 categories of home electronics devices. Microsoft's Pocket PC 2002 OS, though, is designed for chips based on the older, fourth version of ARM's architecture, ARM V4, such as the Intel 206MHz StrongARM SA-1110 that's used in the vast majority of Pocket PC-based devices on the market. ARM V5 is backward-compatible with ARM V4, but older software cannot take full advantage of the ARM V5 capabilities, meaning that most applications run at about the same rate. Suwanjindar declined to comment on when or if the Pocket PC OS would be updated for the new chips or whether Microsoft would offer free upgrades if the OS gets tweaked. However, Microsoft has said that a commitment to a single processor core is central to its handheld device strategy; creating a version of the Pocket PC software optimised for ARM V5 would either render older devices obsolete, or force Microsoft to maintain two separate versions of the operating system. Burden, too, said he didn't expect another version of Pocket PC for some time. Peter Glaskowsky, editor in chief of industry newsletter The Microprocessor Report, said it is not realistic to expect the performance of devices to double when the clock speeds of the processors they use double. Glaskowsky, who uses an Apple Newton, added that software developers for Palm will also run into performance issues as the Palm OS transitions to ARM microarchitecture in its recently released Palm OS 5. Palm is jumping from one chip architecture to another -- not just from one version to another of the same technology -- which means it's a trickier gap to leap. In Palm's favour, however, will be the jump in processor speed. Most Dragonball-based devices use chips running around 33MHz. In addition, handheld makers aren't just concentrating on boosting visible application performance, so benefits from the new chip aren't as tangible, according to IDC's Burden. "In the case of XScale-based devices, manufacturers and consumers are also looking at the improved power management capabilities that XScale brings," Burden said. "Intel's XScale chip can scale the use of power to the level of performance needed by the applications that are in use." Intel said consumers will experience performance improvements on some newer applications. "As we developed (the XScale PXA250), a large percentage of the work went into streamlining power consumption on the system level and the CPU itself," said Mark Casey, a director of marketing at Intel. Some of those areas include the performance of multimedia and security applications, which have shown a 40 percent to 60 percent improvement measured against internal benchmarks, according to Mark Casey. Not many multimedia applications are available on the market because devices have not been powerful enough to run them adequately. Intel's focus will also be on XScale as StrongARM fades into the past. The StrongARM SA-1110 processor, which runs at 206MHz, "is capped, done," said Intel spokesman Mark Miller. "But these new processors have headroom to grow." The XScale processors for handhelds currently top out at 400MHz but have been demonstrated to hit clock speeds as high as 1GHz.
See Chips Central for the latest headlines on processors and semiconductors.
To find out more about the computers and hardware that these chips are being used in, see ZDNet UK's Hardware News Section.
Have your say instantly, and see what others have said. Go to the Chips Central Forum.
Let the Chips Central editor know what you think by email. And sign up for the weekly Chips Central newsletter.
