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This CPU, as opposed to the earlier, PXA-270 series, is pretty much a step ahead. Now that I’ve praised (at least) the specs (3D acceleration, HSDPA, GPS etc.) of the new Qualcomm MSM7200 (SoC) chipset, let’s see what the competition (mostly Marvell (ex-Intel), but also Texas Instruments (TI)) offers.

You may already have read THIS PPCT thread and the highly recommended Marvell XScale PXA3xx Application Processors Tech Report, which is probably the best article on the new architecture. Therefore, I only elaborate on the news (read at least the latter article for a complete overview and background); what is planned and what new devices (will) have the new CPU’s (which isn't explained in the article).

While the new Monahan platform still doesn’t support 3D acceleration, GPS and built-in cellular phone support (unlike the Qualcomm chipset – and, of course, with TI’s CPU’s, phoning / non-3G cellular data capabilities), it has some great news; for example, in cases, much better performance and, what is even more important, hardware support for video decoding. The latter includes even support for H.264, the, without doubt, best, current, compressed video format. So far, this (except for hardware support for H.264 – the Intel 2700G doesn’t support H.264, which also means video players must use the far less efficient CPU to decode H.264 and can’t just rely on the 2700G to do this) has only been available to users of PDA’s based on Intel 2700G’s (that is, the Dell Axim x50v / x51v models and nothing else) – not even to users of the GoForce 5500-based PDA’s (the video acceleration capabilities of which, currently, isn’t supported by any video / multimedia player and it’s only later that it might receive support in CorePlayer as is also explained HERE); for example, the O2 XDA Flame.

Note that PPCT / CoreCodec forum member sonichedgehog360 has posted a decent overview of the new CPU HERE – worth a read because it has some new info, along with links, on the capabilities of the new platform.

Multimedia playback acceleration– will it indeed be supported?

Why would you need hardware acceleration support, in the first place? The explanation is simple: if the hardware supports video decoding, you can save a LOT of CPU (and, therefore, battery life). However, not all hardware solutions support all (popular) video formats and, even worse, even if the hardware supports video decoding, the players may not be able to use it. In the following section, I elaborate on all these issues.

Hardware video playback support is completely useless if the multimedia player software itself doesn’t support the hardware (that is, doesn’t explicitly call its functions). This is why you won’t see any CPU usage difference and/or won’t be able to underclock to 208 MHz your Intel 2700G-based Dell Axim x50v/x51v if your player doesn’t explicitly use the 2700G to decode video when playing back traditional DivX videos. The player must have explicit hardware support for the chipset. This can be more problematic than one would think.

As far as the current versions of multimedia players are concerned, currently, it’s only the “old” Intel 2700G (that is, the x50v/x51v) that is natively supported by TCPMP / CorePlayer (the two best video player apps). As far as the (pretty rarely used – now, it’s only the O2 XDA Flame that uses it) GoForce 5500 chip is concerned, as is also explained in my Flame article, CorePlayer will only receive support for it in the not very near future, if at all – as of version 1.4, 1.5 or 1.6 (currently, CorePlayer is still at version 1.1). Hopefully both the new Marvell PXA-3x0 and the Qualcomm MSM7200, both much more widely used than the GoForce 5500, will receive support earlier and with much more probability.

The current situation?

Note that, currently, many recent (!), 2007 Windows Mobile models, even flagship ones, are based on the older, much less capable Intel PXA-27x-series CPU. Most important examples of these are the HTC Advantage X7500 / X7501 (HTC Athena), the current flagship model of HTC, the O2 XDA Flame and all the forthcoming I-Mate Ultimate models (see links HERE). I-mate's sticking to the old, outdated architecture in their still future(!), not-released models is a big letdown and, therefore, I wouldn't really recommend these devices to any geeks or power users. These models, despite being pretty new (the X7500 and the Flame was released in March and May, respectively, and, again, the I-Mate devices will only be released later this year), are still based on the old, PXA-270 XScale CPU. It’s only with (some) future models (most importantly, the HP iPAQ 210) that the new platform will be used. Hence, if you need decent, flawless (no dropped frames), preferably high-resolution (VGA) H.264 video playback without your video player chewing through your battery, you might want to wait for the iPAQ 210 - or any other, PXA-310-based Windows Mobile phone instead of, say, going for the X7500 or waiting for the new I-Mate models. You might also want to prefer devices with the Qualcomm chipset – it is also vastly superior to the old, PXA-270 architecture, (also) video playback wise (see the description of Qtv HERE). Note that CorePlayer doesn't seem to support the latter.

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