Intel and Texas Instruments have officially licensed ARM's ARM 6 architecture a week after both companies announced partnerships with Palm as part of the latter's shift to the ARM processor platform.

Both Intel and TI had some say in the development of the ARM 6, apparently, as did Motorola - the other ARM partner working with Palm. However, Motorola has yet to say that it is licensing the technology from ARM.

The fact that ARM admits that Motorola had some input suggests that the two companies' official announcement is just a formality.

Ditto the Intel and TI announcements. However, it does mean the two can now talk about their ARM 6 plans. Intel says it will build ARM 6 into its Xscale CPU line. That's probably some way off - the first Xscale products based on ARM 5 aren't scheduled to appear until early 2002.

ARM 6 essentially offers enhanced multimedia functionality, specifically video and audio, to make it better suited to high-speed mobile data applications. ARM says it will say more about ARM 6 in October. ®