Most of you will probably still recall that Intel recently sold most of its XSCALE processor division to a semiconductor company named Marvell. So far so good – Marvell has announced a new PXA family called PXA3xx. TamsPalm already has the nitty-gritty on the three processor subclasses:
Overall news on the 3xx
Marvell has stated that Microsoft is is committed to working with partners to provide access to a wide range of innovative and compelling applications, helping Windows Mobile users stay on top of their jobs, stay informed and entertained while on the go
– looks like we’ll have some Windows Mobile fun first.
MusicMax technology will allow customers to get up to 30h of MP3 playback from their devices.
The processors support digital cameras with up to 5MP resolution, and also support effects like image stabilization natively.
Three families exist. They are optimized for MIPS, video and cost!
The 320 family – the MIPS beast
This processor can scale up to 806 MhZ and will become available in devices Q1 2007. It supports 32 bit DDR, has a 256KB cache on board and brings along Intel Wireless MMX2 and a 2d graphics accelerator with 768KB of framebuffer.
The 310 family – the video guy
This processor comes with up to 624 MhZ of clock speed – DDR Ram is not mentioned anywhere. Its main selling point is support for various video related tasks and – like it or not – DRM.
The 300 family – jack of all trades
This processor has 624MhZ of clock speed and supports only 16bit DDR RAM. Other than that, it is similar to the 320, also having the 2d accelerator(only 256KB of framebuffer though) and MMX2….
Overall, I am not sure when a Palm OS device will become available with one of the 3xx processors. While Marvell states that Palm platform support is available, I am not sure if this will ever translate into a real device…
What do you think?
Related posts:
Content, RSS
Twitter
I’m quite impressed with this new lineup. I really thing theses processors are gonna be everywhere. Actually they are in a lot of the products we buy. I’m liking the boost to it’s video capabilities. But why would Palm bother?
Hi Jeff,
nice to see you around here!
The reason why Palm should bother is simple IMHO – no choice. Once Intel stops building PXA27xx, Palm will need to move on…
Best regards
Tam Hanna