Coming soon: 1GHz in your pocket

[Brian]

ARM has announced the Cortex A8 mobile processor which will be capable of delivering up to 1GHz of processing power. From the press release:

"ARM today announced its new Cortex™-A8 processor which will revolutionize consumer and low-power mobile devices, enabling the delivery of higher levels of entertainment and innovation to end users. Launched at the second annual ARM® Developers' Conference, in Santa Clara, California, the ARM Cortex-A8 processor delivers up to 2,000 DMIPS making it ideal for demanding consumer products running multi-channel video, audio, and gaming applications. For next-generation mobile devices, the ARM Cortex-A8 processor delivers industry-leading performance and power efficiency while using less than 300 mW in 65nm technology. For the first time, low-cost, high-volume products will have access to desktop levels of performance using the Cortex-A8 processor."

The ARM Cortex-A8 is expected to be available to licensees and device manufacturers starting the first quarter of 2006. With a low-power processor providing 1GHz of processing power, next-gen handhelds and smartphones will truly become mobile computers.

[Bob Russell]

Now we're talking! I suppose late 2006 is about as early as we could even begin to hope for a device, but probably 2007. Then isn't Intel going to also have a mobile chip available along these lines? Mobile computing is amazing already, but has a long way to go. It sure keeps me on the edge of my seat waiting for the next generation of devices.

[Bob Russell]

Another observation.... anyone planning Windows or Linux mobile devices like handtops or slates ought to really ramp up the product capabilities and battery life at much lower costs. One of the next big challenges is surely going to be how to integrate and synchronize the information on desktop, web, tablet, pda so you can use whatever device is convenient at the time, and not lose your data, nor have to put sensitive data on a remote server outside your firewall.

Wonder if Palm's product announcements later this year will address all this?

[Brian]

Originally Posted by BobR

Another observation.... anyone planning Windows or Linux mobile devices like handtops or slates ought to really ramp up the product capabilities and battery life at much lower costs. One of the next big challenges is surely going to be how to integrate and synchronize the information on desktop, web, tablet, pda so you can use whatever device is convenient at the time, and not lose your data, nor have to put sensitive data on a remote server outside your firewall.

Wonder if Palm's product announcements later this year will address all this?

With ubiquitous, always-on wireless connectivity, I could easily foresee something along the lines of Newton Personal Data Sharing that runs a mini web server on your device. You could make any of your data public or private, and then "log in" to your device on any other computer with a web browser to sync your own data. It's all stored on your device, not on someone else's servers.

For example: If you give a business contact access to your public calendar, they can see public appointments while private appointments will be blocked out showing just that certain dates/times are unavailable. You could give your friends and family access to your private calender where they can see everything. You could do the same thing will contact info, notes, to-dos, documents, etc, placing public items in a "public" folder while keeping everything else private with limited access that you control.

You can see an example of NPDS in action here serving up a website and giving access to notes, datebooks and even a live screenshot. You can even leave a "note" right on the Newton. Post David a note and tell him how cool this is.

It is definitely cool and powerful, and I think it's a glimpse of things to come. What is amazing is that Newtons have been able to do this for years with a 200MHz processor. Imagine what faster processors, more storage, and ubiquitous hight speed connectivity will bring!

I've used this on my MP2100 and it is amazing. I can't wait to do this on a next-gen Palm device, I'm crossing my fingers. Could this be one of the features of Palm's next revolutionary device? Sound familiar?

From Jeff Hawkins:

I'll give you a couple clues. I always think of mobile computing as personal computing. This long-term vision has led us through everything -- first the organizers and now through the smart phone space. It's like everything a personal computer is. Continue down that path. What are the implications of a world where everyone has a super high-speed Internet connection in their pocket and many gigabytes of storage, super-fast processors, audio, visual and multimedia? What are the consequences of that? How will that change computing when you have all that stuff available to you all the time? I try to think into the future. That's how we come up with new products. So I'm not going to tell you what it is, but it's following the consequences of mobile computing.