Comments on: Developers Say the PACE Is Fast Enough

Greetings, Roel.

This looks VERY promising. Hopefully we will see some revolutionary changes in OS6, such as a dedicated gaming API. One thing is clear...the best days are ahead for PalmOS! :-)

Howard Tomlinson, the CEO of Astraware, said "From the OS 5 demos done by David Fedor at both this PalmSource Developers Conference and the one before using a demo board he had there, you can be sure that PACE will run quite adequately for all normal apps. The Zap!2000 that he showed running on it had quite a bit of custom 68k in there instead of OS calls for graphics, and that was running faster than on a normal device, so I think you can safely see that 'good' apps that call into the OS will run at least as well as on current devices, and those that are 'bad' and bypass the OS to do custom code should still be fine."

Aaron Ardiri from MobileWizardry. said, "We ran tests with Lemmings at PalmSource, and PACE was emulating faster than the API's were being implemented natively."

there is a bit of confusion between "good" and "bad" here. just because the use of API's doesnt happen - it doesn't mean "bad". in many cases, the API's that PalmSource provide are full of error checking, special case scenarios, "what if..." type code. this slows things down. when i make a statement that PACE was emulating faster than the native ARM API's - it is due to the fact that we have taken the API, and, optimized it specifically to what we want; taking into account known issues/scenarios such that the additional error checking is not required. these routines are also going to be faster if converted to native ARMlets (which, in our case, we didn't need to do).

applications that use API's will notice no speed problems at all, and, in many cases are much faster than previously witnessed on the m68k units.

i should note that the only true BAD thing to do is to access the screen buffer directly. in our tests and research into ARM units - doing so will not crash your application however it will not show what you want. endiness and alignment are two serious issues. when copying to the screen, we use an API to ensure compatibility on hardware we are not aware of. this is what allows our applications to remain forward compatible.

Despite this encouraging news, there is still room for improvement. OS 5 doesn't allow developers to write completely ARM- native applications, though they can include small of ARM code called ARMlets. The next version of the Palm OS, generally referred to as OS 6 though PalmSource hasn't officially given it a name, allows true ARM native apps. According to PalmSource, code that has been recompiled for ARM-based chips is 61 times faster on a 200 MHz ARM processor compared to a 33 MHz Dragonball one.

we were fortunate to get our deity3D engine running on an ARM testing board at PalmSource and, since it uses a LOT of m68k code and close to no API's; it ran like a dog. :) deity3D [test version] ran at around 3-4 frames per second without as-is (as compared to 15-16 frames per second on a 33Mhz 68k). this is a classic example of where the use of ARMlet code will sufficiently speed up the execution time - but, not many developers will be required to do this.

PalmSource provides a lot of information to developers - and, this is great. now, off we go to convert those 25000+ lines of assembly to C so we can be ready for the new hardware when it is released. i would recommend the PACE link about for users who want to know how it will work under the "hood" - its an interesting read.

// az
aaron@ardiri.com
http://www.ardiri.com/
http://www.mobilewizardry.com/

In addition, I wanted to point out that I spoke to more developers than were quoted in this article and not a single one of them had any concerns about how quickly PACE and OS 5 would work. I was looking for at least one opposite opinion to make the article more balanced but I couldn't find one.

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News Editor

Does the NDA prevent developers from speaking about forthcoming OS5 apps? I ask this because I have seen several developers advertise their current apps as OS5 ready. The sneak peak page for Launcher X even shows a partial snip of this app running in high-res in OS5. If I was a programmer I would want to get people stirred up over my OS5 ready mp3/wav/wma/ogg/etc player due out in the fall as an example.

It's a good idea for users to be able to use older apps still on their new OS5 devices. But it looks like OS6 will be the ultimate upgrade for Palm users. Of course if Palm is still alive and nothing happens bad before then.

It's nice to have some more info on OS5, Ed. Now we need some secret pics of these devices. We'll see if it's all worth it in the next couple of months.

This is marketing mumbo-jumbo. Of course, PACE "emulates the 68k"--that's what "interpreting the 68k instructions" means.

Still, some people are worried that OS 5 will actually be slower than OS 4. However, developers that have been able to run their applications on test boards running the new operating system aren't worried.

Many Palm applications spend their time waiting for the user and do very little computation. So, of course, they are going to be fine.

However, the whole point of going to ARM is to allow developers to deal with more memory and write more compute-intensive applications. And for that, PalmOS5 is largely useless because using native ARM code is so cumbersome.

In different words, if you couldn't run an MPEG-4 player in software on a PalmOS4 device, you probably won't be able to run it on a PalmOS5 device unless some developer wastes a lot of time trying to deal with Palm's baroque ARM native subroutines. Few developers are likely going to bother.

According to PalmSource, code that has been recompiled for ARM-based chips is 61 times faster on a 200 MHz ARM processor compared to a 33 MHz Dragonball one.

That should probably read "6.1 times faster". An ARM processor is not going to give you a disproportionately high speedup relative to a 68k.

The fact remains: there is little reason for people to upgrade to PalmOS5 for the software. If you don't need new hardware that happens to come with PalmOS5, just wait for PalmOS6. The real question is why Palm is even bothering releasing PalmOS5.

If that's the intention then please also offer noise-reduction THX headphones with 2 gig Memorystick etc.....

All I want is my study room - read a book, listen to music, watch a sitcom and play some games while sending emails and writing proposals with Excel and Word.

"PACE does not emulate the 68k Dragonball chip or other hardware, nor does it run the old operating system. Instead, it interprets the 68k instructions itself, and handles 68k trap instructions (used by applications to call OS APIs) by making calls into the native Palm OS 5 system."