Enhanced PWM controller
The pulse width modulator (PWM) in DragonBall EZ has been enhanced to be more programmable by the software developer. A PWM is often used to generate tones or sounds by generating a waveform that is input into a low pass filter and a speaker. The EZ PWM provides eight bits of resolution as well as a five byte FIFO (i.e., first in, first out) to increase performance and quality of tones generated. Both the Palm IIIx and Palm V organizers utilize this new PWM to increase the quality of the tones generated by the Palm device.

Smaller package, improved features
One of the main objectives of the DragonBall EZ was to reduce the physical size of the processor chip while also reducing cost. In this effort, a number of tradeoffs were made to reduce the number of pins on the package. The number of pins correlates directly to the cost of the package as well as the size of the package.

DragonBall EZ reduces the number of Serial Peripheral Interconnect (SPI) ports from two to one. An SPI port is used to talk to another component of the system, such as a keyboard, touchscreen controller, or a communications subsystem such as a modem or wireless data modem. Wireless data modems can transmit data over cellular networks, packet data networks, or even FLEX paging networks. An SPI connection consists of a master (the controller of the data interface) and the slave (the subservient device in the system). Most applications did not have the need for two separate ports simultaneously (one master and one slave) as offered on the Standard DragonBall, so the decision was made to eliminate one of the two SPI ports, leaving a master port only in DragonBall EZ.

DragonBall EZ implements a single UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter) that is capable of IrDA 1.0 speeds of up to 115Kbps. IrDA is the protocol spoken by the infrared transceiver found in the Palm III connected organizer, and allows the exchange of data between Palm devices using light not visible to the human eye. Infrared technology has been around for some time in remote controls for consumer devices, but the IrDA standard allows the exchange of data at rates up to 100 times as fast. In addition, the UART is also traditionally used to provide communications between systems, such as the HotSync functionality and modems found on Palm organizers. The integration found in DragonBall EZ allows IrDA implementations with minimal external components, translating into greater cost savings for system designers.

In addition, DragonBall EZ reduces the number of timers from two channels (as in standard DragonBall) to one channel. A timer is used to measure the length of time between events defined by the programmer. When the time limit is reached, an interrupt is generated to tell the processor core to stop what it is doing and perform the task that the programmer defined to happen when the timer expired. Reducing the number of timer channels from two to one decreases the pin count of DragonBall EZ while still maintaining the facilities necessary for most systems.