If Microsoft Corp hardens its cut-down Windows CE operating system with real-time features, established suppliers of real- time system software such as Wind River, Microware, Lynx and Mentor Graphics will have to watch out. Electronic Engineering Times believes that is exactly what Microsoft will announce at next week’s Windows CE developer’s conference. Windows CE, used in a range of notebook and handheld devices doesn’t currently include the types of services, including super-fast response times, required process control and telecoms industries. At 500Kb, the embedded Java virtual machine Microsoft has licensed for use in CE from Hewlett-Packard is hardly suitable for use in unconnected appliances. Indeed Wind River, Microware et al are already implementing Sun Microsystems Inc’s Personal and Embedded subsets of Java on their real-time operating systems. The paper figures Microsoft will add a new prioritization scheme, upping CE’s current five priority levels to 32, a real-time clock, support for thread-based device drivers, settable device-driver priorities, timing diagnostics, DLL mechanisms for real-time threads, semaphores and real-time isolation for non-real-time threads. Embedded system software vendors we spoke to said the news is interesting but believe most vendors will take a wait and see approach to gauge Microsoft’s commitment. After all existing RTOS vendors have spent years hardening their products for embedded markets.
