Samsung Electronics, a system-on-a-chip manufacturer, has joined PalmSource's Palm OS Ready Program. The program aims to lower development costs and shorten time-to-market for Palm OS licensees manufacturing ARM-based handhelds and smart phones. Other Palm OS Ready Partners include ATI Technologies, Intel, MediaQ, Motorola and Texas Instruments.

Samsung said its chip, the S3C2410, features an ARM920T CPU core and is first System-on-Chip to have a NAND flash boot loader. The company also said the S3C2410 also offers a set of tailored peripherals that are desirable for smartphones and portable handhelds. For example, the processor has SD/MMC and SDIO support, which enable mobile devices to support expandable storage capacity and SDIO protocol devices such as digital cameras through a single slot.

The S3C2410 is now shipping in discrete form and a System-in-Package solution, integrating 256Mb NAND Flash and 256Mb SDRAM with the S3C2410 in a single package for substantial board real estate and power saving, has been announced.

Samsung's application processor and reference board have already passed Palm OS Ready certification; the final step silicon providers must take before their chips can be included in new Palm OS devices.