Inside the WebPDA

US analyst firm Forrester Research claims that "ultimately, all electronic appliances will be Internet-enabled." Well, that sounds perfectly reasonable, and perhaps the first generation of personal global access devices will look something like this.

US-based software house ISI has written up a pre-prepared reference design that is fully customisable, giving third-party developers more time and resources to focus on adding competitive usability features, ergonomics and competitive differentiation to their products. The design is built around ISI's existing embedded personal operating system, pSOS+ and its real-time operating system, RTOS, and comes free with either of these systems. Importantly, both are proven and are embedded in over 38 million devices worldwide.

But ISI isn't foolish enough to think it can make any real change in this arena without heavyweight help. The WebPDA design uses technology supplied by a number of its partners. Mitsubishi Electric is supplying its own virtual remote personal computer (VRPC) hardware design and embedded M32R microprocessor. Sun is bringing its pJava v1.1 and JIT compiler to the party, while the Espial Group has committed to providing a raft of applications including email and the usual personal management features you would expect from a PDA.

Here are the current mouth-watering specifications for ISI's WebPDA Reference Design.

All comments to the Mailroom please.

• HARDWARE

M32R/D processor from Mitsubishi Electric

32-bit RISC CPU

80MHz internal clock speed

20MHz external clock speed

16-bit external data bus

2MB on-chip DRAM

128-bit on-chip DRAM bus width

1/4 VGA colour backlit display

integrated wireless LAN support

• REAL-TIME OPERATING SYSTEM

PSOSystem v.2.2.0 RTOS

(pSOS+ v2.2.0; pREPC+ v.2.2.3; pNA+ v.3.2.0; pHILE+ v.3.1.3)

pRISM+ v.1.2.3 integrated development environment

Diab Data v.4.la:4 compiler

SearchLight v.1.0.3.3 debugger

• MIDDLEWARE

PJAVA v.1.1 from Sun Microsystems

JIT compiler

Additional system enhancements

• APPLICATIONS

PIM and email applications from Espial Group Assistant

Core Footprint 90kB

Customisable and extendable API

Calendar, Appointment Manager, Task List, Address Book

Ebox email client

Core Footprint 120kB

Customisable and extendable API

POP3, IMAP4, Multiple Mailboxes

Would you love to get your hands on a WebPDA? Tell the Mailroom