Symbian packs ARM punch
The Symbian mobile computing platform now supports the latest ARM chips
The Symbian consortium has announced that its Symbian OS is the first mobile platform to include native support for processors based on the ARM v6 architecture. Symbian has also announced closer co-operation with chip firm Texas Instruments to further optimise Symbian OS for its Omap mobile chips. The moves will lead to higher-performance smartphones in the future.
At the Symbian Partner Event in London, David Wood, the consortium's executive vice president of partnering, evangelism and research, said that Symbian had unique insight into the needs of mobile phone manufacturers. "The ARM v6 architecture-based Symbian OS solution improves power and memory performance while also enabling enhanced capabilities that licensees want to build into their future products," he said.
Symbian is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Matsushita, Motorola, Psion, Siemens and Sony Ericsson, and develops its software platform for data-enabled smartphones such as Nokia's 9210 Communicator.
The ARM v6 architecture is the latest version of the processor design that powers most new handhelds as well as many phone and smartphone handsets. ARM v6 adds single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) extensions to the ARM architecture to accelerate functions such as signal processing and audio and video encoding. "Writing applications that use the new multimedia SIMD instructions in the ARM v6 architecture will let developers create more compelling content without compromising battery life," said Mary Inglis, director of operating systems business development at ARM.
Processor maker Texas Instruments said that it had licensed the ARM v6 architecture for use in its next generation of Open Multimedia Applications Protocol (Omap) chips. The Omap family, which combine an application processor and a communications processor onto a single chip, are currently used in products such as HP's Jornada 928 wireless handheld and Palm's new Tungsten T device. Devices based on the forthcoming processors are not expected to ship until 2004.
Symbian said it is working with Texas Instruments to further optimise the platform for Omap. Symbian version 7.0, released earlier this year, included a hardware accelerator API to let developers partition functions between the applications processor and the communications processor.
Symbian added that 20 products based on the Symbian OS are under development, but many have suffered from delays. Sony Ericsson's P800 smartphone was originally scheduled to ship earlier this year but is still unavailable.