Hitachi Ltd says it is broadening its existing business and development relationship with Microsoft Corp over the Windows CE operating system, and will establish a dedicated development organization focused on mobile, consumer and real-time applications for CE. Hitachi will work on the evolution of Handheld PCs using its SuperH RISC family of chips, and will develop a home multimedia station that can manipulate, integrate, store and play digital data from consumer devices such as TVs, satellite broadcasts, the internet, digital cameras, local storage media and DVD. Hitachi says it will also help Microsoft add the promised real-time capabilities to Windows CE, using its Dependable Autonomous Hard Real-time Management technology. Hitachi says it chose to focus on CE because of its affinities with Windows NT. Hitachi’s SuperH chip is already used by six of the ten current suppliers of the Microsoft branded Handheld PCs, and sells development boards to other hardware firms working on CE-based systems.
