An Overview of Palm OS

Designed for special hardware

small screen ( 160 x 160 )

less processing power than desktop PCs
quick turnaround expected
limited memory ( 512k ~ 8MB )
no disk drive or PCMCIA disk

The Appearance of a PalmPilot

System Architecture

Memory Orgnization

Motorola 68328 uses 32-bit addresses

External data bus is only 16 bits wide
ROM - stores the main suite of applications
( the OS itself)
RAM - stores additional and replacement
applications & system extensions
RAM - dynamic RAM & storage RAM

Dynamic RAM

Served as temporary space for allocation

Analogous to the RAM installed in a typical
desktop system
Is cleaned after reboot
Implement a single heap that provides
memory for dynamic allocations( TCP/IP,
IrDA, )

Storage RAM

Holds nonvolatile user data ( appointments,

to do lists, memos, address lists, )
Is accessed via calling the database manager
or the resource manager
Analogous to the disk drive of a typical
desktop system

Memory Chunks and Heaps

A chunk - contiguous memory between 1byte

~ 64 KB that has been allocated by the Palm
OS memory manager
Each chunk resides in a heap
Memory manager allocates memory in the
dynamic heap
Data manager allocates memory in the storage
heap

Memory Heaps

Each heap has a unique heap ID

The heap with heap ID 0 is the dynamic
heap
Only the dynamic heap is reinitialized
through soft reset cycles

Movable / Nonmovable Chunks

Each chunk is referenced by a local ID

The local ID of a nonmovable chunk : the
offset of the chunk from the base address of
the card
The local ID of a movable chunk : the
offset of the master pointer to the chunk
from the base address of the card

The Memory Manager

The functions of the memory manager:

allocating new chunks

disposing of chunks
resizing of chunks
locking and unlocking chunks
compacting heaps when they become
fragmented

Heap Structure
Heap

Master pointer table

stores 32-bit pointer
to movable chunks
Movable chunks are
allocated at the
beginning

Heap Header
Master pointer table
Movable chunks

Non-movable chunks

Chunk Structure

Each chunk begins with an 8-byte header

followed by that chunks data
Flags:sizeAdj flag:
high nibble : set for free chunk
low nibble : reqSize = size - 8 - [this value]

size field( 3 bytes)

the size of the chunk, which is larger than the size
requested by the application , including the chunk
header itself

Chunk Structure(cont.)

Lock:owner byte
high nibble : the lock count, which is
incremented when being locked
low nibble : the owner ID of the memory chunk

hOffset field( 3 bytes)

the distance from the master pointer to the
chunk header, divided by two

The Data Manager

The database is analogous to disk

A database is a collection of records
A record is mapped to a memory chunk
A database accesses its records by storing
their local IDs
An application requests a particular record
in a database by index

The Resource Manager

Resources : store the UI elements of an

application, such as images, fonts, dialog
layouts,
Resource manager : Data manager with the
additional ability of tagging each chunk of
data with a unique resource type and
resource ID

Application Structure

Single threaded
Event-driven
PilotMain() corresponds to main() in C
PilotMain -- Response to launch codes
An event loop in response of a normal
launch

Flowchart of event handling

Developing Apps on Palm

Various development tools:

Code Warrior for Palm OS

Palm SDK (header files, documents, examples)
GCC
POSE - An open source Palm emulator runs on
Windows, Mac and UNIX

Conclusion

The Palm OS provides a good platform for

developing Palm apps
The Palm OS provides various libraries for
communicating with PCs
A good OS design is not necessarily having
the most advanced feature, but having the
best integration of the hardware

The End

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