Motorola's MX1 DragonBall processor for handheld devices now
supports Microsoft's Windows CE operating system, the companies
announced yesterday.
Scott Horn, director of marketing for the embedded and appliance
platforms group at Microsoft, said Motorola is now the third major
vendor to make chips for the handheld device market that can run
Windows CE or components of it.
Processors Intel and Texas Instruments also support Windows CE,
along with Transmeta's Crusoe processor software.
Windows CE is an operating system for mobile devices and what
Microsoft calls "small footprint" devices, such as personal digital
assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones. Microsoft licenses the
operating system to internal and external customers, who can opt to
include whatever portions of the source code they desire with their
final product, such as Microsoft did with Pocket PC.
"We have made this announcement as part of an overall strategic
decision to become operating system agnostic," said Motorola
product marketing manager Luis Quiroea. Motorola has already
announced support for Linux, Symbian's operating system, and
PalmSource's Palm OS 5.
The MX1 Dragonball processor, based on the ARM920T core from ARM,
runs at clock speeds of up to 200MHz. A Motorola press release in
June claimed it was the first processor to be certified for Palm OS
5.
The partnership between Motorola and Microsoft will allow handheld
makers to produce less expensive devices for end users, because of
the integrated wireless Internet connectivity and low power
consumption of the MX1, combined with the multimedia capabilities
of both the MX1 processor and Windows CE, Quiroea claimed.
Motorola will make an application development system available for
Windows CE 3.0 on Wednesday. Support for the latest version,
Windows CE .net, will come by the end of this year.
Microsoft's Pocket PC and SmartPhone 2002 operating systems use
source code from Windows CE 3.0, and as those products move toward
the latest version, Motorola's processor will move with them, Horn
said.