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Developing Handhelds

Targeting Personal Digital Assistant Platforms

Sasmito Adibowo

Arcle Technologies

http://www.arcle.com

June 6, 2002

Agenda

Looking Ahead...

PGeneral Issues

PPlatform OverviewsPDevelopment Tools

PBusiness Summary

General Issues

... a handheld is not a PC. Bigger is notnecessarily better. Speed is notmeasured in megahertz or MIPS, oreven FLOPS for that matter. Developerswill need to shift paradigms whentargeting handhelds...

General Issues

Opposite Usage Patterns

People generally usehandhelds in frequent, shortbursts; while people work onPCs for several hours at atime.

Accesses per day

Average sessiontime (minutes)Source: Palm, Inc user surveys

Waiting a few minutes for a PC to bootand a wordprocessor to load is acceptableif ones going to write a paper for twohours.If the sole purpose of turning on the

handheld is just to look up somebodysphone number to call, waits can befrustrating.

General Issues

User Interface

PSmall screen, most are 6cm * 7cm, some aresmaller.

PLimited resolution and color.

PSmall or no keyboard.

PStylus, not mouse programming will beslightly different.

PLess taps is better.

General Issues

Memory Considerations

PMost handhelds do not carry secondarystorage all data are stored in the mainmemory.

POut-of-memory situations will occur moreoften applications must degrade gracefullyinstead of simply terminating.

PMemory grew from 2MB, 8MB, to 64MB. Butas handhelds grew smaller, dont expect thattrend to continue.

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PGeneral memoryallocation/de-allocation.

PTwo types of memory:< Moveable chunks (handles).< Fixed chunks (pointers).

Palm OS

Memory Manager

PHeap compaction

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Windows CE

Platform Overview

PVersion 3.0 renamed to Pocket PC.

PAvailable in three form factors:

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Lineo Embedix

Platform Overview

PMostly standard Linux system with kernelversion 2.4.

PBusybox provides a subset of POSIXcommand-line utilities.

PQt/Embedded GUI, virtual framebuffer.

PPersonalJava 1.2 environment included.

PBase applications provided by Qt Palmtop.

PRoot filesystem mounted asRAM disk.

PAll data are managed asregular files.

PThe Java VM is handled likea regular process.

Lineo Embedix

Memory Information

Source: SL-Series Memory Information forJavaTM & Qt/Embedded Applications

Development Tools

Discussion Scope

PNative-code compilers.

PBytecode or source interpreters.

PJava environments (VM, libraries,and tools).

Native Code Compilers

CodeWarrior for Palm OS

PThe official development tool for the PalmOS.

PUses C, C++, or Motorola 68K assemblylanguage, program directly to the Palm OSAPI.

PHost platform: Windows or Mac.

PC++ Support:

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Native Code Compilers

Microsoft eMbedded Visual Tools

PMicrosofts CE development toolset.

PComponents:< eMbedded Visual C++.< eMbedded Visual Basic.

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Java Environments

KVM Reference Implementation

PFocus on connected devices.

PMultithreading support.PVM size: 50K 80K, working memory: 128K.

PCurrent target: Palm OS. Desktop: Windowsand Solaris.

PNo native support.

PContact:http://java.sun.com/products/cldc/ds/

Java Environments

Jeode PDA Edition

PPersonalJava 1.2 compliant VM certified bySun.

PComplete JNI support.

PTargets: Windows CE, Linux (X11,Qt/Embedded, QPE).

PDynamic Adaptive Compilation (DAC).

PContact: http://www.insignia.com

Java Environments

Waba

PStrict subset of Java: language, class file,bytecode format.

PCross-platform VM: Palm OS, Windows CE,Newton, TI, even DOS.

PSmall footprint

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Business Summary

Targeting Linux

PPros