MediaQ Joins Palm OS Ready Program

Almost lost in the excitement over the completion of Palm OS 5 yesterday was the announcement that MediaQ has joined the Palm OS Ready Program. MediaQ makes multimedia-oriented processors. Its processors aren't designed to run the entire handheld. Instead, the main processor can hand off graphics intensive tasks to a MediaQ chip, which will handle them more quickly and with less power use than the main processor.

Sony already uses graphic controller chips made by MediaQ in its Clié line, which greatly improve its performance. Now that MediaQ has joined the Palm OS Ready Program, we can expect to see its processors on handhelds from other licensees.

"MediaQ's products, combined with the power, flexibility, and ease of use of the Palm OS platform, will support licensee innovations," said Christy Wyatt, senior director of Worldwide Licensing at PalmSource. "Palm Powered products continue to push the design envelope with leading multimedia capabilities. Our Palm OS Ready partners play an important role in helping licensees bring their products to market more quickly in order to continue to offer customers the very latest technology."

About the Palm OS Ready Program
The Palm OS Ready Program allows chip manufacturers to licence portions of the Palm OS and use them to create a Device Abstraction Layers (DAL) for their own processors. This is sort of a translation layer between the hardware and the operating system. These DALs allow the Palm OS licensees to use chips from whichever manufacturer suits them without having to write a DAL of their own, reducing costs and development time.

Top processor manufacturers are already part of the the Program, including Intel, Motorola and Texas Instruments.

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Thank you PalmSource!

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 10:14:47 AM #
YES!

Futur MediaQ CPU

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 10:43:34 AM #
MediaQ has a complete processor SOC that is not yet annonced.

It's an 160-200 Mhz ARM920 CPU (similar to the one inside the motorola chip) + USB + flash card I/O + the LCD controller already used in the sony clie NR70 series + a realtime MPEG4 encoder/decoder + a java accelerator.
One its greatest feature is a very LOW power consumption.

RE: Futur MediaQ CPU
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 1:19:43 PM #
java accelerator....cool....
no more J2ME......
Java Accelerator
bcombee @ 6/11/2002 2:07:01 PM #
The Java accelerator is probably ARM's Jazelle technology. This is a really neat processor extension that turns Java bytecodes directly into ARM instructions. It basically implements a key part of any Java virtual machine directly on the chip. You still need a runtime environment and a lot of support code, but it does allow Java code to run faster-than-JIT speeds without the overhead of pre-compilation.

This core enhancement is available to any ARM licensee, so it could show up in chips from Intel, TI, or Motorola too.

--
CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com

RE: Futur MediaQ CPU
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/12/2002 10:47:31 PM #
more cpu competition is good for Palm and integration makes a lot of sense.

MediaQ already in Palm m130

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 4:16:27 PM #
If I'm not mistaken, the Palm m130 already has a MediaQ chip in it.
RE: MediaQ already in Palm m130
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 8:29:31 PM #
if the m130 has a mediaQ chip, what does it use the chip for? it can't do anything that other palm-branded devices can't already do, and is powered by the same old 33 mhz dragonball chip that's been in devices for years.
RE: MediaQ already in Palm m130
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/12/2002 2:53:43 PM #
MdeiaQ makes a range of graphics processors for Palm devices. The one in the m130 is just an LCD controller - it does not have advanced MediaQ technology such as "realtime MPEG4 encoder/decoder + a java accelerator" which will be in upcoming products. The announcement here is just that MediaQ is supporting OS5 - MediaQ will be announcing specific technology built around this, in the near future.

About time we get decent gfx

I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 6:06:26 PM #
Good news, its about time we get some good old games ported with great graphics on my handheld. Don't bother replying if you use your Palm for ToDos only, you can stick to it for the rest of your life, while I will enjoy good games and mpeg4 movies. All we need now is decent battery life and HUGE storage.
RE: About time we get decent gfx
I.M. Anonymous @ 6/11/2002 9:52:40 PM #
I already enjoy near Divx quality movies w/ Kinoma ^_^
RE: About time we get decent gfx
cykalan @ 6/12/2002 4:18:25 AM #
that's different, Kinoma movie size are still quite large relative to DivX

Alan
----
Read your manuals before you ask!!
RE: About time we get decent gfx
batsai @ 6/12/2002 1:48:28 PM #
I think this is a great thing- I use both a Clie T615 and a Toshiba e310. The Toshiba has a MediaQ chip in it which gives it an edge graphically over most of the other Pocket PC's (save for the new x-scale machines) and at a lower price point. I can't wait to see how Palm integrates this into their new line of handhelds!

RE: About time we get decent gfx
swan2925 @ 6/27/2002 3:53:54 AM #
What I want to say is, I am using N710C upgraded to N760C Rom....
When I bought this machine, I spent around HKD$4500, and I believed that this would be a very very very powerful Palm machine....

However, ....nobody will buy new N710C/N760C/N610C now, right??

I am totally disappointed...~
What I should do is, to wait, may be buy NR70V today, it is just HKD$3300 here....

For its sudden improve in the power of Palm Powered Machine, I DO advise no one to buy it now...
For the one who want to buy a Palm Powered Machine, just wait until next year....

.............
ATI MPEG4 REAL TIME HARDWARE DECODE
+ CMOS CAMERA
+ OS5.5
+ ARM 400MHz CPU
.................

For Palm, I just suggest to WAIT...

PS, i have Palm IIIc, Palm III, Palm Vx, in the past, i couldn't imagine how fast is Palm growing >.<

"no eye to see"

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