Arm Holdings's Java acceleration technology, Jazelle, will be used in a new line of handsets to be sold by Japan's NTT DoCoMo the company said. Arm officials said they hope that the win may open the door to Jazelle being used across the mobile industry.
Jazelle is technology that is integrated into Arm's microprocessor designs and is designed to speed up applications built using Java. Aplix, an Arm partner, is jointly building a Java platform for Foma-brand handsets with NTT DoCoMo. Aplix said it will incorporate Jazelle into the platform. Foma is the brand name for the wireless data network technology used by NTT DoCoMo.
Because the Japanese mobile market is slightly different than it is in Europe or the U.S., Arm expects to see Jazelle used in virtually all handsets to be sold by NTT DoCoMo, said Mike Inglis, executive vice president of marketing for Arm. Typically, NTT DoCoMo endorses a product, like Jazelle, and the handset vendors that make products for NTT DoCoMo then build their products to the operator's recommendations. "Rather than in the West, where operators take what they're given, in Japan with DoCoMo, [handset vendors] do what they're told," Inglis said.
Because NTT DoCoMo is worldwide leader in mobile technologies, Inglis is also hopeful that the rest of the mobile market will follow in adopting Jazelle. The technology is already embedded in Arm chipsets used by handset makers such as Nokia but such companies must decide to turn on and use Jazelle.
For end users, Jazelle means faster applications, said Inglis. While such speed is particularly important for applications such as gaming on mobile phones, it's also important for any multimedia application. The mobile market is generally moving toward incorporating more rich media applications, such as video and graphical services, and Jazelle aims to improve the delivery of such applications, he said.
