Motorola announced this week that its DragonBall MX1 microprocessor has been certified for the recently delivered Palm OS 5 from Palm subsidiary PalmSource.

"Motorola, a Palm OS Ready Program partner, offers market-leading cellular expertise and leadership in processors to the handheld market. Their continuous support of our efforts will help us succeed in meeting the needs of handheld users who require converging wireless and multimedia applications," said Christy Wyatt, senior director of worldwide licensing for PalmSource.

According to Motorola, the ARM compliant DragonBall MX1 targets next-generation handheld computers, including those based on the Palm OS, as well as 2.5G/3G wirelessly connected mobile products, smart phones, advanced information appliances and Web browsers/tablets. The company claims the ARM core-based DragonBall MX series microprocessor features an optimal balance of low power, high performance, a high level of integration, and a rich peripheral set. Additionally, Motorola said it is optimized for Bluetooth applications with high-speed interfaces to external Bluetooth solutions. Mobile computing products can leverage DragonBall MX1's ARM920T core with speeds up to 200 MHz, and on-chip peripheral integration for color graphics and MP3 and MPEG4 media processing.

Motorola said the DragonBall family is fully supported with Metrowerks CodeWarrior development tools.